“Language is the only homeland.”

Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.

A man should not love the moon. An ax should not lose weight in his hand. His garden should smell of rotting apples, And grow a fair amount of nettles.

Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date.

I have defined poetry as a ‘passionate pursuit of the Real.

Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.

All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.

A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.

I am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.

Even if that is so, there will remain A word wakened by lips that perish, A tireless messenger who runs and runs Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, And calls out, protests, screams.

It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends.

I knew that I would speak in the language of the vanquished No more durable than old customs, family rituals, Christmas tinsel, and once a year the hilarity of carols.

It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.

A weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.

What is poetry which does not save nations or people?

You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.

The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.

Not all homes are meant to be lived in. Some are meant to be abandoned. Some burnt.

Me personally, I come from very, very humble beginnings – little, small town in Alabama, you know, staying at my granddaddy house. We really didn’t have nothing.

As long as I’m reading, I’m at home.

I could drive from the age of nine. My dad had his car pitch at home, and we used to drive the cars around the land, take them up to the tap, wash them, and reverse them back.

You can fool people. You can fool anybody anytime of the day, but you can’t fool yourself. At night, when you go home, you’ve got to be straight up with you.

I can be the nice family man at home, and then when I go to the gym, maybe sparring with someone, I switch into beast mode. It ain’t pretty.

Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge.

Petersburg, growing up at home, all by my family and friends, Petersburg really, city-raised me, you know everybody there.