“As things get worse, poetry gets better because it becomes more necessary.”

“If passion was a substance I would say it is dark brown, and then blood red. It's like wet grass, tons of it soaked in mud. It's warm and it stinks like shit and it's unaccountably and endlessly good. It's thick and it goes on for miles and it isn't so much deep as bottomless and it holds you in its grip, you never drown. And then it goes. That's all you know.”

“Poetry and novels are lists of our devotions. We love the feel of making the marks as the feelings are rising and falling.”

“Poetry always, always, always is a key piece of democracy.”

“Poetry from the bottom up is an act of selection: you kind of feel your way through the crowds of poems. The good ones came forward a long time ago, and the bad ones fell away.”

“In Arlington, people would laugh at you if you tried to get people to look at your drawings or listen to your poetry. It was like you thought you were special.”

“As things get worse, poetry gets better because it becomes more necessary.”

“I wasn't afraid of being poor. I didn't want to live in a big house. I'm the perfect size for poetry. I can move around.”

“Sunday is a likely day to write a poem. Because poetry is a piece of language flying around: you'll find notebooks, something on your phone. It's about finding them and getting them off that crumpled piece of paper and onto my computer.”

“If the poetry world celebrate its female stars at the true level of their productivity and influence, poetry would wind up being a largely female world, and the men would leave.”

“When somebody's in love with you, they think it's amazing you've written them a poem, and when they don't love you anymore, they hate those poems. They wish those poems would go away.”