May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

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.

Like my friend Warren Buffett, I feel particularly lucky to do something every day that I love to do. He calls it ‚tap-dancing to work.‘

Man is only great when he acts from passion.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

Letters are something from you. It’s a different kind of intention than writing an e-mail.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

Husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

Without football, my life is worth nothing.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

I think tolerance and acceptance and love is something that feeds every community.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

To be loved is very demoralizing.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.

The things that transfixed you as a child, that you found most exciting was not a passing fancy, but a message about what you’re supposed to do.

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman’s heart.

I kind of love Cole Miller.

There is no such thing as a lovers‘ oath.

You can stroke people with words.

The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.

In one day, I have times where I’m feeling great, I feel like I love my life, and then 2:30 rolls around and I’m the angriest man alive. My wife sees it.

When people get married young, you don’t really understand the true definition of marriage.

Love is too young to know what conscience is.

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

Farewell, fair cruelty.

I only act from my heart.

‚Tis love that makes the world go round, my baby.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

I’ve been a lot more into Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, which was a bit complicated for me to understand the language of each social media, because they all talk in different ways. It’s a nice way for me to tell people I appreciate them, which I forget to do sometimes.

I love Manchester. Everyone knows that – I have said it many times. Manchester is in my heart.

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

All mankind love a lover.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

At the age when other children, I imagine, experience their first ‚feeling‘ for a person, or for art, or for religion, I was affectionate, good, and even pious: by that I mean that under the influence of my mother, I was devoted to the Child Jesus.

I make a lot of expressions constantly. I’m animated.

We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

My mami and papi love my music. They’re always listening to the radio waiting for one of my songs to come on. And when it does, they turn up the volume – and turn it back down when it’s over.

I don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

A lot of people can’t stand touring but to me it’s like breathing. I do it because I’m driven to do it.

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.