I never thought I'd be doing poetry books. I never really studied poetry. But the first one I did was after my mother died and I realized that people sort of think and talk about her style and fashion but in fact what made her the person she was was really her love of reading and ideas.

The biggest problem is people are afraid of poetry think they can't understand it or that it will be boring.

You know in my music career there was a moment where the irony was just so heavy. There were people in my audience that were the reason I developed neuroses. These people that tortured my life were using my art my poetry as fuel for them to torture other people.

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

What I wanted to do in rock 'n roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.

When I was younger I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep.

You know people speak in poetry all the time. They just don't realize it.

The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious the irrational and the collective body of our ancestral memories.

Poetry is the work of poets not of peoples or communities artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.

In science one tries to tell people in such a way as to be understood by everyone something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry it's the exact opposite.

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.

It's bad poetry executed by people that can't sing. That's my definition of Rap.

If my poetry aims to achieve anything it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble.

There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them and I am a poet of memory.

And I strongly believe people should rescue dogs or at the very least listen to Bob Barker and have your pet spayed or neutered.

I have a Lab it's fun to hang out and hike with the dog people come up to him and pet him it's fun.

I had a big Akita Yoshi who was fabulous. I loved him. We lost him when he was 12 and I've never been able to replace him. Normally most people lose a pet and get another and keep going on. But it just felt wrong to me it felt disloyal.

There are people all over the world who like to write fan letters in the voice of their pet: 'Hello my name is Fifi and I'm a labrador and I think you're great. Paw paw!'

I have the same pet peeve as Anderson Cooper which is bare feet in public. I hate it. It so grosses me out especially in New York. Oh my God New York in the summer with people and their feet in their sandals and their flip-flops like get it away!

I love animals and feel very strongly that people should not be allowed to buy a pet if they are not able to look after it.

I worked in a pet store and people would ask how big I would get.

Perhaps it is because cats do not live by human patterns do not fit themselves into prescribed behavior that they are so united to creative people.

There are all sorts of cute puppy dogs but it doesn't stop people from going out and buying Dobermans.