Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

The sea isn't a place but a fact, and a mystery.

I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second. And in America, we have it backwards.

Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together.

This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attention.

As long as you're dancing, you can break the rules.

I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.