If people associate me with a region, that's fine with me.

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.

Your mission: Be so busy loving your life that you have no time for hate, regret or fear.

Your targets can only be realized on the basis of dreams.

Fear not, we are of the nature of the lion, and cannot descend to the destruction of mice and such small beasts.

I remember being a teenager and being really impressed by "let's sit around and b*tch" people, and I have so little time for those people nowadays.

I haven't retired from international football - I still believe I have a part to play in the future of England.

God does not rule the world outwardly by gravitation and chemical affinity, but inwardly in the heart of man: as is your soul, so will the destiny be of the world in which you live and do.

My mother has never approved of high heels. As a result, I have never been able to walk in high heels - and they were all I ever wanted. So of course, my daughter has two pairs.

I think that sexuality is the part of human beings that is closest to nature. And nature is dangerous somehow, yes, if you put nature against civilisation, nature is definitely a threat.

On the whole, I prefer not to be lectured on patriotism by those who keep offshore maildrops in order to avoid paying their taxes.

It was Einstein who made the real trouble. He announced in 1905 that there was no such thing as absolute rest. After that there never was.