It's when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart.

But we have only begun to love the earth. We have only begun to imagine the fullness of life. How could we tire of hope?-so much is in bud.

Affliction is more apt to suffocate the imagination than to stimulate it.

When you're really caught up in writing a poem, it can be a form of prayer. I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer. I feel it in different degrees and not with every poem. But in certain ways writing is a form of prayer.

Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.

I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer.

But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.