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" I grew up in a confused house: too much unwanted attention or none at all. "

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" I always feel that whatever isn't necessary shouldn't be in a poem. "

" People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work. "

" To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. "

" I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write. "

" I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished. "

" I decided very early that I wanted to write. But I didn't think of it as a career. I didn't even think of it as a profession... It was the most exciting thing, the most powerful thing, the most wonderful thing to do with my life. "

" To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. "

" You have to be in the world to understand what the spiritual is about, and you have to be spiritual in order to truly be able to accept what the world is about. "

" Instead of taking the reader by the hand and running him down the hill, I want to lead him into a house of many rooms, and leave him alone in each of them. "

" Words have not only a definition... but also the felt quality of their own kind of sound. "

" I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it. "

" One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear. "

" Wasn't it Emerson who said, 'My life is for itself and not for a spectacle'? I have a happy, full, good life because I hold it private. "

" I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it. "

" I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings. "

" Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. "

" I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second. "

" I read Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, every day. "

" Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? "

" There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty. "

" There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay. "

" So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray. "

" I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded. "

" Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response. "

" My parents didn't care very much what I did, and that was probably a blessing. "

" I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things. "

Material Things

" I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing. "

" I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read. "

" To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it. "

" Poetry is meant to be heard. "