I will do whatever I have to do to reach people with the things I believe are important. Life is too short not to do everything you can.

Poets will never be the highest-paid writers in the world. Instead, poetry will go on cutting a hand-made path through the mass-market insanity. For me, anyway, that path is the one that leads to the Chapel of the Grail.

If we had the courage to love we would not so value these acts of war.

We shall all die, and our lives will be irrelevant then. If we make anything that lasts, it outlives us, and it outlives its personal moment. All of my work is deep-dug from me, and every book has to stand or fall without me.

How many of us want any of us to see us as we really are?

When we say we can pull resources away from libraries, from culture, from those parts of the education system that are not about utility, what we are really saying is that the life of the mind is unnecessary.

What you risk reveals what you value.