“Poetry is simple when you write what you see and feel, searching for the words only makes it difficult”

“No two people will ever see or feel things in the same way, Merry. The challenge is to be truthful when you write. Don't approximate. Don't settle for the easiest combination of words. Go searching instead for those that explain exactly what you think. What you feel.”

“What you’re feeling now, and the person you may reach with your words five years from now-that's why you write poetry.”

“So what if the heartaches you wrote last year isn't what you're feeling today. it may be exactly what the person in the front row is feeling. What you're feeling now, and the person you may reach with your words five years from now- that's why you write poetry.”

“What you have to realize when you write poetry, or if you love poetry, is that poetry is just naturally the greatest god damn thing that ever was in the whole universe”

“He had a simple maxim for all competitive or adversarial situations: work out what the other party least wants you to do, and then do it. Relieving your feelings was fun, but the best course of action was to make things as difficult as possible for the person trying to make things difficult for you.”