The desire for self-expression afflicts people when they feel there is something of themselves which is not getting through to the outside world.
For about twenty years, if I managed to write ten or twelve poems in a year; I considered that a pretty successful year, but I wrote 'The Beforelife' within a year.
Furless now, upright, My banished and experimental child You said, though your own heart condemn you I do not condemn you.
Worry less about what other people think about you, and more about what you think about them.
For who ever lived totally as they wanted to; who ever, if they have time to think about it, dies wholly satisfied? And those who remain know it.
The poem is the literary form of the 21st century. It's able to connect young people in a deep way to language... it's language as play.
Poetry, above all, is a series of intense moments - its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotion.
Tears are a river that takes you somewhere…Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace better.
An athlete and actor are really two different temperaments, night and day. As an athlete you really keep things out and as an actor you really bring things in.
I might show facts as plain as day: but, since your eyes are blind, you'd say, 'Where? What?' and turn away.
Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I but when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by.
The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case.
You can't assume any place you go is private because the means of surveillance are becoming so affordable and so invisible.
Humans are humans because we are able to communicate with each other and to organize to do things together that we can't do individually.
One thing we didn't know in 1996 is that it's very, very difficult, if not impossible, to sustain a culture with online advertising.
I think e-mail petitions are an illusion. It gives people the illusion that they're participating in some meaningful political action.
We think of them as mobile phones, but the personal computer, mobile phone and the Internet are merging into some new medium like the personal computer in the 1980s or the Internet in the 1990s.
Laughter and books and wine are holy things; and living is good; and death is a breathlessness with the whole adventure of finding everywhere the traces of one great beauty...
I wanted to write a battle song for the Judeans but so far I can think of nothing noble and weighty enough.
It is important to me that what Poe has to say gets across to people. I want to give people the feeling that I get from all this. I think that we are succeeding. The feedback is very warm.
The world is full of people who never quite get into the first team and who just miss the prizes at the flower show.
