“A sentence is like a tune. A memorable sentence gives its emotion a melodic shape. You want to hear it again, say itin a way, to hum it to yourself. You desire, if only in the sound studio of your ...”

“From an essay on early reading by Robert Pinsky:My favorite reading for many years was the "Alice" books. The sentences had the same somber, drugged conviction as Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, ...”

“This is one of the great human mysteries: why do works of art about bad things such as loss and deprivation make us feel good?”

“I delight sometimes in saying to - as when I'm a teacher, I love saying, 'This is really important, so don't write it down.' To me, what you retain is a very important filter.”

“I think art is not an ornament or refinement at the fringes of human intelligence, I think it's at the center. It's at the core.”

“The last thing a young artist should do in poetry or any other field is think about what's in style, what's current, what are the trends. Think instead of what you like to read, what do you admire,...”

“Lost Time is never found again.”

“How you spend your time is more important than how you spend your money. Money mistakes can be corrected, but time is gone forever.”

“Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.”

“To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.”

“art is risk made visible”

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“Those [things] that we encounter for the first time immediately have a spiritual effect upon us. A child, for whom every object is new, experiences the world in this way: it sees light, is attracte...”

“Because your character is always full of ambition, the news of my being locked up must have been much harder on you than it was on me. When I was arrested, it was almost a relief to know that I cou...”

“Spiritual learning is easy when we realize and experience that everything that everyone said about spirituality is already in action within us!!! Seek within rather than outside.”