It is difficult to be creative and enthusiastic about anything for which we do not feel affection.

In Germany, they have great difficulty with anything that smacks of cultism or messianic leadership. You can't talk about leadership in its charismatic forms.

To admit regret is to understand that we are fallible - that there are powers beyond us. To admit regret is to lose control not only of a difficult past but of the very story we tell about our present. To admit sincere and abiding regret is one of our greatest but unspoken contemporary sins.

There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from.

The thing about great poetry is we have no defenses against it.

The great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body.