Art will not solve your problems. It will not enable you to live merrily.

Poetry is the most bodily of the arts.

To talk about the reality of life here and the work that you do here at the university.

The medium of poetry is not words, the medium of poetry is not lines-it is the motion of air inside the human body, coming out through the chest and the voice box and through the mouth to shape sounds that have meaning. It's bodily.

My devils and angels, fears and hopes, insights and stupidities, loves and loathings, are what they are. I don't edit them out so much as try to make them interesting - whether I am talking to you, or writing a poem, or joking with my kids, or speaking on television.

In the particular presence of memorable language we can find a reminder of our ability to know and retain knowledge itself: the brightness wherein all things come to see.

Sometimes the ideas that mean the most to you will feel true long before you can quite formulate them or justify them.