I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think.

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.

To satisfy a want or a need, you must first go for it

The content of the kingdom love you have make others observe you

God rescues us by breaking us, by shattering our strength and wiping out our resistance.

I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.

We didn’t come to earth to get anything. We came to awaken our full potential and infuse this dimension with divine light.

The employment laws are completely unrealistic. You cannot overcome that in only 10 years. It will take at least another generation before young people are properly qualified.

I do get obsessed with constantly thinking of ideas, all day long, but that's just how it is.

I am extremely close to my brother, Kent, and my sister, Lauren, who have been remarkably understanding about all of my weird sibling tales.

The individual who knows the score about life sees difficulties as opportunities

Doing more with less, is a crucial principle to learn; especially if you're going to be in business in this rapidly changing world.