If you were a pure bolt of fire-cutting the skies I'd touch you-risking my life-not because I'm brave or strong, but because I'm fascinated by what the outcome would be.

I hope that, reading 'Rosa,' people will remember their own family and friends and talk about what they did and did not do.

In law school they teach you that everything is a contract; well, in poetry everything is a narrative.

The job of the architect becomes more difficult in this secular age. Where once he had a god to extol, he now has humans like himself; where once he had "he," he now has "she" and "they.

Writing is a conversation with reading; a dialogue with thinking. All conversations with older people contain repetition. Some of the ideas mean a lot to me, just interesting, so I both embrace and attack the ideas because I found them, well, delightful.

If everybody became a poet the world would be much better. We would all read to each other.

I think one of the nicest things that we created as a generation was just the fact that we could say, 'Hey, I don't like white people.'