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

“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".”

“Here in the United States, we speak with reverence of authentic experience. We write poems about our daddies taking us fishing and breaking our hearts by making us throw the little fish back into the river. We even tell the reader the kind of car we were driving, the year and the model, to give the impression that it’s all true. It’s because we think of ourselves as journalists of a kind. Like them, we’ll go anywhere for a story. Don’t believe a word of it. As any poet can tell you, one often sees better with eyes closed than with eyes wide open.”

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

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

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

“I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it!”