Rumi is astounding, fertile, abundant, almost more an excitable library of poetry than a person.

An elder is someone who understands that the world belongs to the dead.

We make the path by walking.

What you feel in Japanese poetry is always entirely longing.

I got about half the time I wanted to write poetry. I got about half the time I needed to be a father. So there is something in adulthood that has to do with accepting the half of things, allowing a renunciation of the other half, accepting half a basket instead of a full basket.

Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry.

To me, the hope lies in adults forgetting about their retirement and turning toward the adolescents and helping pull the adolescents over that mysterious line drawn on the ground into adulthood. If we don't do that, the adolescents are going to stay exactly where they are for the next 30 or 40 years.