"The test of whether it's poetry is: does it sound beautiful when you say the words over, in your mind or your voice, with no skilled performer, no music, just the sounds and meanings in the words themselves." - Robert Pinsky
"I'm not sure that the benefit - as a writer and as a citizen - that I would get from reading at least the front page of the Times every day or every other day would outweigh the depression." - Sharon Olds
"How swiftly the strained honey of afternoon light flows into darkness and the closed bud shrugs off its special mystery in order to break into blossom: as if what exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious." - Lisel Mueller
"The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish." - Federico Garcia Lorca