“The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.”

“I left parts of myself everywhere,The way absent-minded people leaveGloves and umbrellasWhose colors are sad from dispensing so much bad luck”

“The stars know everything,So we try to read their minds.As distant as they are,We choose to whisper in their presence.”

“He who cannot howl will not find his pack.”

“When people ask me how to find happiness in life I tell them, First learn how to cook.”

“This strange thing must have crept Right out of hell.It resembles a bird’s footWorn around the cannibal’s neck.As you hold it in your hand,As you stab with it into a piece of meat,It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird: Its head which like your fistIs large, bald, beakless, and blind.”

“Charles Simic, when asked what he thought of Slam Poetry events: "They are fun, but they have as much to do with poetry as Elvis Presley had to do with Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk".”