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

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.

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.

If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.

If in the laukik (worldly life), one attains the vision of alaukik (beyond the world), his work is accomplished.

People hate as they love unreasonably.

We defend and we build a way of life, not for America alone, but for all mankind.

When it comes to the acting stuff, I like to show up for a couple days and kind of be outrageous and silly, and go back to my day job.

As a leader you provide for people only what they can't provide for themselves.

My mom was an enthusiastic, positive, glass-is-half-full type of person and that is how I live my life and I owe that to her. She was an amazing woman.

Life is a breathing-space between two eternities, a holiday with appalling realities behind and before.

Another thing that freaks me out is time. Time is like a book. You have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's just a cycle.

I believe in following your instincts with the people that you like and who you like to be with.

Europe is a woman, now middle-aged, who has already had a number of heart attacks and is currently experiencing the biggest health crisis of her life, but one that need not be fatal.