Genius is a strong aphrodisiac.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

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.

I am old enough to know that laughter, not anger, is the true revelation.

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

Poetry is the inner life of a culture, its nervous system, its deepest way of imagining the world. A culture that ignores its poets, chokes off its nervous system and becomes mortally ill.

If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair.