It's very hard to write humor.

It came to my house. It sat on my shoulders. Your shadow is yours. I told it so. I said it was yours. I have carried it with me too long. I give it back.

The burial of feelings has begun.

There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.

Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.

We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.

If every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we'd live in a much more humane and decent world.