“Spaces within a line, double colons, slashes, are indications of pause, of breath, of urgency, they are not metrically exact as in a musical notation but they serve (I hope) to make the reader think about the sound of the poem.”

The more I live, the more I think, two people together is a miracle.

And that we can deflect words by trivialization, of course, but also by ritualized respect, or we can let them enter our souls and mix with the juices of our minds.

The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement.

What I believe in and what my government represents are not the same thing.

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.

These scars bear witness but whether to repair or to destruction I no longer know.

It is unstable and threatening as the earth is not; it spawns new life daily, yet swallows up lives; it is changeable like the moon, unregulated, yet indestructible and eternal.

The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire. The complexity and fecundity of poetry come from the same struggle.

Practicing till strengthand accuracy became one with the daringto leap into transcendence, take the chance of breaking down in the wild arpeggioor faulting the full sentence of the fugue.

Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.

It’s exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful.

… this world gives no room to be what we dreamt of being

One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else.

Lying is done with words and also with silence.

I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.

A language is a map of our failures.

When you and the world are out of breath, take the steps to ensure your own needs are met. By the moment you know someone can’t on their own, you’ll hopefully be ready to help.

Before you begin, sit for a moment and take a couple of deep breaths. You want to be calm and prepared to maintain mental focus

December will spark the wisdom and knowledge in her breaths so she becomes a new woman in her real form.

The moon can never breathe, but it can take our breath away with the beauty of its cold, arid orb.

I wish to spend a lifetime near a lighthouse where loneliness will be the glimmer of luminous prancing upon ocean waves… rising and falling only for my breathing.

When I used to be on stage, I used to be out of breath; I couldn’t walk that far. Now, I got so much energy. I can do a whole show.

There is nothing prettier in the whole wide world than a girl in love with every breath she takes.

It pains to be insulted every time you breathe when I am your oxygen but you have to wish to breathe.