We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

Because in a split second, it’s gone.

Our necessities never equal our wants.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.

Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

My mum passing away wasn’t funny, but that funeral and what I went through, the things that happened, looking back at it, there were funny moments. You have to be strong enough to look back at it, to sit and assess the situation.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

The good times of today, are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.

Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.

Philosophy is the highest music.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.

It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Last year we said, ‚Things can’t go on like this‘, and they didn’t, they got worse.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider.

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.

You tell me: Can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.

The more you stay in this kind of job, the more you realize that a public figure, a major public figure, is a lonely man.

To insult someone we call him ‚bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, ‚human‘ might be the greater insult.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

Life is so, so short. Bible says it’s like a vapor.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.