Some people want to call me an Appalachian writer, even though I know some people use regional labels to belittle.

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.

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.

If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.

When you play it too safe, you're taking the biggest risk of your life. Time is the only wealth we're given.

Of which beauty will you speak? There are many: there are a thousand: there is one for every look, for every spirit, adapted to each taste, to each particular constitution.

There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.

The great secret possessed by the great men of all ages was their ability to contact and release the powers of their subconscious mind. You can do the same.

What is interesting to me is to find ways to work with early-stage innovators to build from the edge and work on tomorrows ideas.

People in the mass media tend more and more every day to look and act like elected and appointed officials.

It means the world to me to represent the Hispanic community.

I began reading everyhing in the family library. Kidnapped, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe. And of course, if you're running out of books to read you can always read Shakespeare.

Enough of words. Come to me without a sound.

I'll be a YouTuber for as long as I love it.