“Sometimes a poem should just be about a girl jumping rope. It doesn't ...” — Clint Smith Quote

Sometimes a poem should just be about a girl jumping rope. It doesn't have to be something that is imbued with more despair.

My poetry is me trying to reconcile my own life and opportunities I've had with opportunities my students aren't given and how profoundly unfair that is.

This idea of shared humanity and the connections that we make with one another - that's what, in fact, makes life worth living.

Silence is the residue of fear.

We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying that we rarely pay attention to the things they don't.

I think that humor is part of what saves us from despair.

There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.

When I think of Hungarian films, I think of despair and bleakness, and what's more, despair and bleakness of indefensible duration.

To doubt is worse than to have lost; and to despair is but to antedate those miseries that must fall on us.

And there are a lot of people like that, who feel loneliness and despair but cover it up.