"A poet's interest in craft never fades,..." - Quote by Mary Oliver

“It is no use thinking that writing of poems - the actual writing - can accommodate itself to a social setting, even the most sympathetic social setting of a workshop composed of friends. It cannot. The work improves there and often the will to work gets valuable nourishment and ideas. But, for good reasons, the poem requires of the writer not society or instruction, but a patch of profound and unbroken solitude.”

“We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy. I spent a great deal of time in my younger years just writing and reading, walking around the woods in Ohio, where I grew up.”

“Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

“The poet is always our contemporary.”

“Science is continually correcting what it has said. Fertile corrections... science is a ladder... poetry is a winged flight... An artistic masterpiece exists for all time... Dante does not efface Homer.”

“Whoever would understand the poetMust go into the poet's country.[Ger., Wer den Dichter will verstehenMuss in Dichters Lande gehen.]”

“I probably spent more time listening to albums than writing songs. But I think that gave me all the tricks in terms of wordplay, from how I pronounced my words to the actual delivery.”

“I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.”

“If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.”