“Do you remember when they taught cursive in schools? I think they don’t anymore. But I still enjoy it – just the physical act and all the – the whole business of making a thing out of language.”

Love dares the self to leave itself behind, to enter into poverty.

I never had much education in English poetry as such.

Madness and witchery as well as bestiality are conditions commonly associated with the use of the female voice in public.

He stood against the wind and let it peel him clean.

Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.

A man moves through time. It means nothing except that, like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.

One of the principle qualities of pain is that it demands an explanation.

Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.

Consider incompleteness as a verb.

Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.

I am a drop of gold he would say I am molten matter returned from the core of earth to tell you interior things.

You doubt God? Well more to the point I credit God with the good sense to doubt me. What is mortality after all but divine doubt flashing over us? For an instant God suspends assent and poof! we disappear.

Simply do something else and return to it later to find the problem wasn’t a problem at all. Ruptures almost always lead to a stronger project.

To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.

Each night about this time he puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing.

Comfortable means gradually more and more flattened down, more and more blunt – less and less sharp and biting into you.

Why is it that when political ammunition runs low, inevitably the rusty artillery of abuse is always wheeled into action?

Do you never look at yourself when you abuse another person?

Personally, I love Toronto.

Patience is the best remedy for every trouble.

I’ve had contact with Arsenal and Chelsea, but it’s a bit of a mess.

Your love was more of a funeral of hearts than a union of souls.

You have a “turn” every time you have an opportunity to choose. But most of us only see a tiny fraction of the choices we have.

Never forget that it is the spirit with which you endow your work that makes it useful or futile.