Nowadays, what an award gives is a sense of solidarity with the poetry guild, as it were: sustenance coming from the assent of your peers on the judging panel.

I don't think my intelligence is naturally analytic or political.

I'm a firm believer in learning by heart.

Memory has always been fundamental for me. In fact, remembering what I had forgotten is the way most of the poems get started.

I'm lucky in that I can't see myself doing an office job every day. I'm lucky that I can play my sport and go around the world without too much to worry about outside that. I think it's good to be happy with what you're doing.

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.

I actually went to study journalism at Northwestern, thinking that would be my Plan B for a career. But then I realized, if I'm going to struggle and make no money, I might as well do what I really want to do.

I've tended to work at fast-growing companies that improve the way business gets done.