New York was breaking my concentration and disintegrating my thoughts.

My self-editing process is intense.

I suppress the vast majority of what I write.

I was writing notes, but not composing poems. The Hunter began to develop out of this fragmented process.

I think, for me, humour needs to be used like a strong spice - sparingly.

A sequence works in a way a collection never can.

Well, we all start thinking we're going to be Romantic rock stars, but then reality hits and you realize no one reads you but other poets.

I do try to let what is obviously unintended yet naturally good stay in.

I'm not interested in being easy anymore. Readable, yes. Easy, no.

It's a bit of a crapshoot out there with young writers right now anyway.

With 'Carousel' I had an idea and it all came out quickly.

I've often entertained paranoid suspicions about my fridge and what it's been doing to my poetry when I'm not looking, but I never even considered that my fan was thinking about me.

In my opinion, Al Moritz may be the best poet of his generation in Canada.

I don't think there's anything wrong with someone having to read a poem twice. Or even a book.

Humour is a fine line to walk in poetry, as in fiction. I just think it's harder to write. It's harder to keep the respect of the reader too.

I wanted to rock back and forth between myth and distant futures, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It felt a bit like prophecy and a bit like storytelling.

Then I discovered I loved writing poetry more than fiction.

I think the main influence has been living in New York City. Aside from all the crap around 9/11, I find it very demanding to think amid all the noise and visual pollution.

The poetry community here has been extraordinarily welcoming.

I feel as though I've fooled the world into thinking I'm an adult and now they're letting me procreate.

I am still interested in the long or serial poem, but have written a few smaller things. I may start sending to journals again in a year or so... that's about it.

New York was breaking my concentration and disintegrating my thoughts.

I still write the occasional short story, and poked at a novel once, but it's just not what I want to do.

I no longer feel pressure to produce fiction.

In fact, in some ways, I actually feel much more confident about the quality of Carousel than I do about The Cottage Builder's Letter: probably because of its cohesive nature.

The whole competition thing disturbs me. Not that I wasn't a part of it when I first started.

I am certainly suffering from a modicum of performance anxiety.

I guess there is also an element of deliberate change involved. Each of my books has been, at least from my point of view, radically different from the last.

Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal, or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction, but often it's really just about the money, the perceived prestige.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.

Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still.

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet's health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same.

Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.

The mind moves in the direction of our currently dominant thoughts.

There is no other who experiences your thoughts or your feelings.

From heav'nly thoughts all true delight doth spring.

If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

Another principle is, the deepest affections of our hearts gather around some human form in which are incarnated the living thoughts and ideas of the passing age.

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

I agree that it is not just the extremists who harbor bad thoughts or engage in bad acts, but they are usually the source of the polarization and try to keep education and communication of the main stream from moving forward.

Hillary Clinton bothers me a lot. I realized the other day that her thoughts sound a lot like Karl Marx. She hangs around a lot of Marxists. All her friends are Marxists.

Man is made or unmade by himself. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, he holds the key to every situation.

Welcome, wild harbinger of spring! To this small nook of earth; Feeling and fancy fondly cling, Round thoughts which owe their birth, To thee, and to the humble spot, Where chance has fixed thy lowly lot.

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts.

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door.