I think there are things for all of us to do as long as we're here and we're healthy.

I tell poets that when a line just floats into your head, don't pay attention 'cause it probably has floated into somebody else's head.

When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water.

Nothing could stop Mississippi.

Good health is a duty to yourself, to your contemporaries, to your inheritors, to the progress of the world.

What shall I give my children? who are poor, / Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land...

Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home.