There's another part of getting older that's just wonderful. Which is you see the way the stories turn out with peoples' lives.

Plot is just a fancy way of saying 'and then.

It's important to know what you're going to spend your life on, and the only way you're going to find that is by connecting with the force inside yourself.

You reach a point in life where you realize that you might as well do what you need to do, because your being loved or not being loved is really a function of the people you encounter and not of yourself. That is an immensely liberating insight.

we need poetry most at those moments when life astounds us with losses, gains, or celebrations. We need it most when we are most hurt, most happy, most downcast, most jubilant. Poetry is the language we speak in times of greatest need. And the fact that it is an endangered species in our culture tells us that we are in deep trouble.

What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago.

Never joke with the press. Irony does not translate into newsprint.