Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques.

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.

Magic is an ancient practice that has power over superstitious mind.

Fame and recognition break all scandals

When does life begin? When does the soul enter? That's a religious question. Science is not going to be able to help with that.

I feel very, very thankful to have the family that I do.

Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

No Victory Without Suffering

If you accept that security is a process, and if you can eliminate the human interaction or intervention in that process by automating more, that is a good thing.

Every Sherlock Holmes story has at least one marvelous scene.

Less gossiping, more learning. Less complaining, more excelling. Less walls, more bridges. Less fear, more courage

For [the] quick in wit and light in manners be either seldom troubled or very soon weary, in carrying a very heavy purse.