If we knew the value of suffering, we would ask for it. 
I like to read becauseit kills me.
Every creative act is an act of hypocrisy and violence. You may have to think about it for a while, but I am sure you can discover your own.
Art has always been aware of itself as art.
It is the first experience you ever had of reading a decent poem: 'Oh, somebody else is lonely, too! 
Something unpronounceable followed by a long silence points out my life is becoming a landscape. 
The words secret and sacred are siblings. 
Poetry is sentimental to begin with. To write a sentimental poem is an act of redundancy. 
The wasting of time is the most personal, most private, most intimate form of conversation with oneself, as well as with another. 
I hated childhood / I hate adulthood / And I love being alive. 
In the end I would rather wonder than know 
We are all one question and the best answer seems to be lovea connection between things.
In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to? 
It is not what a poem says with its mouth, it's what a poem does with its eyes. 
Every time it starts to snow, I would like to have sex. 
Irreverence is a way of playing hooky and remaining present at the same time. 
Metaphor is not, and never has been, a mere literary term. It is an event. 
Hope wears a strange raincoatand straps a gun inside.
Words have a love for each other, a desire that culminates in poetry. 
My happiness is marred only by my failure to attain it. 
The industrial world destroys nature not because it doesn't love it but because it is not afraid of it. ![Mary Ruefle quotes: [On filling out a grant application:] I seek an extended period of time, free from all distractions, so that I might be free to be distracted.](http://www.wisefamousquotes.com/images/mary-ruefle-quotes-1789515.jpg "Mary Ruefle quotes: [On filling out a grant application:] I seek an extended period of time, free from all distractions, so that I might be free to be distracted.")
[On filling out a grant application:] I seek an extended period of time, free from all distractions, so that I might be free to be distracted. 
Although all poets aspire to be birds, no bird aspires to be a poet. 
In the beginning William Shakespeare was a baby, and knew absolutely nothing. He couldn't even speak. 
I remember being so young I thought all artists were famous. 
All of the heroesyou see falling down
were filmed trying to stand up.
A poem is a neutrino - mainly nothing - it has no mass and can pass through the earth undetected. 