It is sad but true that sometimes we need the tragedy to help us to see how human we are and how we are more alike than we are different.

I like to go back and read poems that I wrote fifty years ago, twenty years ago, and sometimes they surprise me - I didn't know I knew that then. Or maybe I didn't know it then, and I know more now.

Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.

If you were the President of the United States or the Queen of England - you couldn't have a person who would be more protective than my mother was for me. Which meant really that I could dare to do all sorts of things.

I have great respect for the past.

The subject of the poem usually dictates the rhythm or the rhyme and its form. Sometimes, when you finish the poem and you think the poem is finished, the poem says, "You're not finished with me yet," and you have to go back and revise, and you may have another poem altogether. It has its own life to live.

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!