The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.
I had to be intellectually satisfied as well as emotionally because at that time of life one doesn't just fall into it in adolescent emotion, and I was satisfied at every point that it was the one way and the hard way to do things.
Maybe we can use a metaphor for it, out of dance. I think for many years I was aware of the need, in dance and in life, to breathe deeply and to take in more air than we usually take in.
Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning. I was much further out than you thought, and not waving but drowning. I was much too far out all my life, And not waving but drowning.
Life has loveliness to sell, all beautiful and splendid things, blue waves whitened on a cliff, soaring fire that sways and sings, and children's faces looking up, holding wonder like a cup.
You'll be fooled if you only get your hip-hop from the mainstream, you know. The things that move people are not just found in the mainstream cultures. And when we talk about hip-hop in general, hip-hop's basically preoccupied with life.
So much of my poetry begins with something that I can describe in visual terms, so thinking about distance, thinking about how life begins and what might be watching us.
The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot's turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm's blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its worst, it feels like alliga...
In the day-to-day, farm work is stress relief for me. At the end of the day, I love having this other career - my anti-job - that keeps me in shape and gives me control over a vegetal domain.
When you begin to write poems because you love language, because you love poetry. Something happens that makes you write poems. And the writing of poems is incredibly pleasurable and addictive.
Rather a thousand times the county jail than to lie under this marble figure with wings and this granite pedestal bearing the words "pro patria." What do they mean anyway?
How one walks through the world, the endless small adjustments of balance, is affected by the shifting weights of beautiful things.
I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish.
It is easy to tell the toiler How best he can carry his pack But no one can rate a burden's weight Until it has been on his back
We flatter those we scarcely know, We please the fleeting guest; And deal full many a thoughtless blow, To those who love us best.
If a superior give any order to one who is under him which is against that man's conscience, although he do not obey it yet he shall not be dismissed.
He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.
We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way.
I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful but I never actually collapsed oh Lana Turner we love you get up
What would it profit thee to be the first Of echoes, tho thy tongue should live forever, A thing that answers, but hath not a thought As lasting but as senseless as a stone.
I am in no way different from anyone else, that my predicament, my sense of aloneness or isolation may be precisely what unites me with everyone.
