Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In the glare of your mind, be modest. And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.
But how did you come burning down like a wild needle, knowing just where my heart was?
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? / Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force.
What can we do about God, who makes and then breaks every god-forsaken, beautiful day?
Everybody has to have their little tooth of power. Everybody wants to be able to bite.
What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places?
On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel?
The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.
A dog is adorable and noble, a dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist.
it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.
I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us.
Words have not only a definition... but also the felt quality of their own kind of sound.
So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.
When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider the orderliness of the world.
I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it.
I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished.
What misery to be afraid of death. What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.
There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?
When it's over I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
Why should I not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside, looking into the shining world?
A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life.
Every word is a messenger. Some have wings; some are filled with fire; some are filled with death.
Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?
It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.
When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself included.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
... to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers.
I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage.
I acknowledge my feeling and gratitude for life by praising the world and whoever made all these things.
The three ingredients of poetry: the mystery of the universe, spiritual curiosity, the energy of language.
Belief isn't always easy. But this much I have learned--- if not enough else--- to live with my eyes open.
I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while.
You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn't need any more of that sound.
We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body.
Look, I want to love this world as though it's the last chance I'm ever going to get to be alive and know it.
I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it.
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it.
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.
Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty.
I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second.
I have trouble with some books because I'm so much in agreement with them I'd rather just sit in the grass myself.
My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work.
You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving
So every day So every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you.
Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.
Things take the time they take. don't worry. How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?