Love is a fire/It burns everyone/It disfigures everyone/It is the world's excuse for being ugly.

It's like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I'm stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it's delicious and it's horrible and I'm in it and it's not very graceful and it's very awkward and it's very painful and yet there's something inevitable about it.

It's the notion that there is no perfection - that there is a broken world and we live with broken hearts and broken lives but still there is no alibi for anything. On the contrary, you have to stand up and say hallelujah under those circumstances.

A poem has a certain - a different time. For instance, a poem is a very private experience, and it doesn't have a driving tempo. In other words, you know, you can go back and forward; you can comeback; you can linger. You know, it's a completely different time reference.

How bitter were the Prozac pills of the last few hundred mornings

Maybe there's a god above but the only thing I learned from love was how to shoot at somebody who outdrew you.

It's hard to be serious about so many things. [Look at the whole emphasis] on the charts, if you're a songwriter.