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" I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them. "

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" I write short stories, and I wrote a play. "

" For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about it. I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art. "

" My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends. "

" I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day. "

" For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard. "

" I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about! "

" I make a discovery in a poem as I write it. "

" I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive. "

" I think one of the things that people tend to forget is that poets do write out of life. It isn't some set piece that then gets put up on the shelf, but that the impetus, the real instigation for poetry is everything that's happening around us. "

" One definition of eternity is that we are not alone on this planet, that there are those who've gone before and those who will come, and that there is a community of spirits. "

" I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers. "

" All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself. "

" The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with. "

" I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry. "

" I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem. "

" I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age. "

" Libraries are where it all begins. "

" Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature. "

" If they don't read, if they don't love reading; if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer. "

" You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible. "

" Without imagination we can go nowhere. And imagination is not restricted to the arts. Every scientist I have met who has been a success has had to imagine. "

" To write for PC reasons, because you think you ought to be dealing with this subject, is never going to yield anything that is really going to matter to anyone else. It has to matter to you. "

" The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings. "

" I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it. "

" It makes me furious to hear haters of all skin colors - especially Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalists - deride other people because of their different beliefs and lifestyles. "

" To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet. "

" I'm a night person. My best times are midnight to six, actually. "

" Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early. "

" Nothing is too small. Nothing is too, quote-unquote, ordinary or insignificant. Those are the things that make up the measure of our days, and they're the things that sustain us. And they're the things that certainly can become worthy of poetry. "

" It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate. "