Don’t patronize the chain bookstores. Every time I see some author scheduled to read and sign his books at a chain bookstore, I feel like telling him he’s stabbing the independent bookstores in the back.
Telling
One of the most startling events in my life was when my older son was about 16, and he blamed me for all the troubles of the world. So I, I felt like telling him, ‘Oh no, I was just like you when I was your age; I wanted to change the world, too.’
We have great international experts within India telling us that the climate is changing, and actions has to be taken, otherwise China and India would be the countries most to suffer from climate change.
Burnout is a way of telling you that your form of activism was perhaps not very full circle.
One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.
One stops being a child when one realizes that telling one’s trouble does not make it any better.
Young men keep telling me they don’t ‘have it all’ either. And they may have a point. But if you define ‘having it all’ as the opportunity to have a successful career and a family, I’d say this. When a man tells his coworkers he’s going to have a child, no one asks him how he’ll manage or if he’ll be coming back to work.
I can’t tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can’t tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.
People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable.