The American Dream is a phrase we'll have to wrestle with all of our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we're redefining it now

Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.

When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.

I think if you put something in a file that says "war poems" or "love poems" that you already restrict the way in which the poem might move.

It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry.poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.

If they don't read, if they don't love reading; if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer