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" I learn a lot about my poems when I read them by the way people respond to them. "

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" Apparently, I've been considered a recluse. "

" Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that. "

" When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. "

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

" Poetry is meant to be heard. "

" 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. "

" At the time I was growing up, literature was involved with the so-called confessional poets. And I was not interested in that. I did not think that specific and personal perspective functioned well for the reader at all. "

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

" 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. "

" Sometimes breaking the rules is extending the rules. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that. "

" It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning - it'll be gone. "

" I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write. "

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

" I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. "

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

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

" I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else. "

" Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. "

" You can fool a lot of yourself but you can't fool the soul. "

" We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy. "

" I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation. "

" 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. "

" 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. "