The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees - to learn something by being nothing

Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents.

My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he or she has taken for subject. If the poem is thin, it is likely so not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers--has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way.

Today I am altogether without ambition. Where did I get such wisdom?

Things take the time they take. Don't worry.

I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.