"Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat."

"Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things."

"I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering."

"A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair."

"A poem begins with a lump in the throat"

"Writing a poem is discovering"

"Poetry is what gets lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation."

“He was such a bad writer, they revoked his poetic license.” 

I don't always understand poetry!' 'You don't always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now and you will understand it...whenever.

We read poems from the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse. Neil insisted on spilling wine over my carpet.

Poetry is not made to be sucked up like a child's milkshake, it is much better sipped like a precious malt whisky.

Even the greatest poets, I think, cannot quite get to the places that music can get to in the human - I was gonna say mind, but it's actually the entire body. It somehow seems to infuse the entire body.

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

"The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstacy is holy!"

"Poets are damned… but see with the eyes of angels."

"We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter"

"Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private."

"Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does."

Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off.

Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are.

While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.

Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool. But you yourself may prove to show it, Every fool is not a poet.

Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day, Charm'd the small-pox, or chased old age away; Who would not scorn what housewife's cares produce, Or who would learn one earthly thing of use?

The poetry of the earth is never dead.