Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

I never played with anything like toys.

I’m nobody, who are you?

Everybody has a purpose.

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

It is a joy to be an artist, but it doesn’t mean very much unless that work is somehow useful in some way and contributes to others.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

A poem is a naked person… Some people say that I am a poet.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.

If you lose a big fight, it will worry you all of your life. It will plague you – until you get your revenge.

I don’t really believe in the type of pressure that people are wanting to put on the type of music that I make.

I know some people might think it odd – unworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people’s poet so I write for the people.

You have to dream before your dreams can come true.

As a kid, we would drive up and down 77 North – that’s our highway – there would be office buildings on the side of the highway and I’d be like, that’s what my house is going to look like when I get older. I’m going to start making my house look like this.

My life is not unlike Truman’s. I can’t go anywhere.

To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in this treasure house, the Bible?

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand – good heavens! – that’s what I really call troublesome.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

We must use time creatively.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

My mother was and will always remain my greatest hero.

Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.

God’s Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm. I love that.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

There’s no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.

The honor of a nation is its life.

Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

The way to know life is to love many things.

I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Ageing’s alright, better than the alternative, which is not being here.

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It’s made up of pioneers, the beginners. That’s where the action is.

You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

I think any life can be interesting, any surroundings can be interesting. I don’t think I could have been so brave if I had been living in a town, competing with people on what can be called a generally higher cultural level.

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live.

Everybody’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.

Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego’s fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.