the wasting of time is the most personal, most private, most intimate form of conversation with oneself, as well as with another.

In one sense, reading is a great waste of time. In another sense, it is a great extension of time, a way for one person to live a thousand and one lives in a single lifespan, to watch the great impersonal universe at work again and again That is why I read: I want everything to be okay. That’s why I read when I was a lonely kid and that’s why I read now that I’m a scared adult.

My happiness is marred only by my failure to attain it.

I study nature so as not to do foolish things.

Yes, the mistrust of poetry has a long history, for a variety of reasons, but they all come down to sentiment and invention over fact and truth. Figurative language is suspicious.

I'm lucky enough to occasionally be able to do something I love - write poems - and unlucky enough that what I love confuses and overwhelms me.

in the beginning William Shakespeare was a baby, and knew absolutely nothing. He couldn't even speak.