The poet's function is to make his imagination . . . become the light in the mind of others. His role, in short, is to help people to live their lives.

In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.

Make the visible a little hard to see.

We must endure our thoughts all night, until the bright obvious stands motionless in the cold.

The word is the making of the world

True villains are extremely photogenic.

All of our ideas come from the natural world: trees equal umbrellas.