"Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers"

"Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark"

"It's best to have failure happen early in life. It wakes up the Phoenix bird in you so you rise from the ashes"

"Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance"

"One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste"

"The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them"

"I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think, If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry, I can do that"

"I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music"

"I wish you would read a little poetry sometimes. Your ignorance cramps my conversation"

"Personality is everything in art and poetry"

"There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away"