Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet.

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.

Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.

In your life, everything revolves around your mind.

By the work one knows the workman.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

There's a commercial break coming and I'm very excited about it and you know why? Because that's what keeps daddy in suits.

My strength is basically my get off. It is overpowering. I can get after the quarterback on first, second and third down. I pride myself on being an every down guy.

Power has got to be the most intoxicating thing in the world—and of all forms of power the most intoxicating is fame.

The easier your hair is to manage the happier you'll be with it and the prettier you'll feel.

I don't like looking back.

The power of art is not in communication but effect; what it does, not what it relates.