I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery.

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.

Only one kind of religion cannot give peace to everyone. Whatever ‘degree’ one is sitting at, that ‘degree’ of religion he requires.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don't know you think.

Having been part of this wonderful show ever since series one, I know all too well what it's like to perform to the nation on the famous 'Strictly Come Dancing' dancefloor.

My favorite books are the ones that make me smile for hours after reading them. I want that for my readers, for the sweetness to linger. Sort of like chocolate, but without the calories.

Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with passion.

There are lots more people in the House. I don't know exactly - I've never counted, but at least a couple hundred.

I don't think, until you've actually lost somebody you really love, that you can go through that door that allows you to be grown-up.

One believes in Stephen Dedalus as one believes in few characters in fiction.

I only like to write shows that I feel like no one has seen before.

I always say that chemistry is something impossible to manufacture. It's either there or it isn't. The fact that you're friends doesn't necessarily equate to great chemistry.