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

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

" Animals praise a good day, a good hunt. They praise rain if they're thirsty. That's prayer. They don't live an unconscious life, they simply have no language to talk about these things. But they are grateful for the good things that come along. "

" If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant to look like. "

" Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is neither conscious or unconscious. "

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

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

" I simply do not distinguish between work and play. "

" 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. "

" My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work. "

" Poetry is meant to be heard. "

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

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

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

" I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force. "

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

" 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. "

" Writers must... take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems. "

" If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" Believe me, if anybody has a job and starts at 9, there's no reason why they can't get up at 4:30 or five and write for a couple of hours, and give their employers their second-best effort of the day - which is what I did. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" I'd rather write about polar bears than people. "