I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.

I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it.

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.

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

... the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores.

I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else.

We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness.