The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

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.

Say, Not so, and you will out circle the philosophers.

Life may be seen through many windows, none of them necessarily clear or opaque, less or more distorting than any of the others.

A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States.

If I can find something that I haven't done before, then that is an immediate...it peaks my interest.

I love working with children and this young boy, Thomas Sangster, is quite a remarkable young actor. He raises your game, you know. He certainly raised mine.

The world isn't set up equally, and the first billion people using Facebook have way more money than the rest of the world combined.

Oh, wondrous power! how little understood, Entrusted to the mother's mind alone, To fashion genius, form the soul for good, Inspire a West, or train a Washington.

Get hold of the main thing: That the world and the self are one and perfect. Only your attitude is faulty and needs readjustment.

The novel should be understood as a structure built to accommodate the greatest possible amount of cool stuff.

Everyone wants a hand in the outcome, a piece of the knowledge.