"People who read poetry have heard about the burning bush, but when you write poetry, you sit inside the burning bush."
"I don't mind suffering as long as it's really about something. I don't mind great luck, if it's about something. If it's the hollow stuff, then there's no gift, one way or the other."
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Source: Li-Young Lee, Earl G. Ingersoll (2006). “Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee”, p.49, BOA Editions, Ltd.
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"Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming."
"Memory is sweet. Even when it’s painful, memory is sweet."
"Every time you write a poem it’s apocalyptic. You’re revealing who you really are to yourself."
"That's what I want, that kind of recklessness where the poem is even ahead of you. It's like riding a horse that's a little too wild for you, so there's this tension between what you can do and what the horse decides it's going to do."
"To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade. Before the story ended, he'd removed the iron sliver I thought I'd die from. I can't remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. And I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness he laid against my face."