One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime.

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.

When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.

Take care of your manners as seriously as your money.

All wish to be learned but no one is willing to pay the price.

Science is about knowing engineering is about doing.

Makeup artists are always giving me their stuff. My favorite thing is free stuff. I'll take anything.

Public servants are paid to serve the American people. Do it well.

Never can a room look comfortable without books ... Books ought to be scattered all over the house, even in the passages, in the bedroom, les livres du chevet, everywhere.

People focus on things that vibrate very slowly during meditation and because they are so open they make themselves really sick, psychically.

Safety lies in the middle course. [Lat., Medio tutissimus ibis.]

Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with one wounds himself with the other.