Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.

You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It's one of the great things poetry does.

It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience.

I have taught students from the New York City area so long I have a special affinity and rapport with them. It surprises me sometimes that there are students from anywhere else.

Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity.

A lot of my students are Asian-American, and it has been thrilling to watch them break through the stereotypes into something alive and surprising.

Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.

I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess.

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.

Some people want to call me an Appalachian writer, even though I know some people use regional labels to belittle.

The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.

I was charmed by a performance given by Crowded House at Toronto's Massey Hall where the bass player broke a string.

The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.

I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse and in a republican government more than in any other.

The American movement, Tea Party, whatever you want to call it, I think that is a very hopeful moment for the country and, I know, we really are the community organizers, are we not?

The very best thing you can give someone is what they want.

Fogg states that all humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain; to seek hope and avoid fear; and finally, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection

For just experience tells, in every soil, That those that think must govern those that toil.

I've thought for a long time that my body type would have worked well in the '70s. The idea that you could be a broad-shouldered, small-breasted woman and still wear really great outfits.

All my words are but chaff next to the faith of a simple man.

If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.