What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we can't define it.

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.

The money… will talk?' said Mr Spools carefully.'Imps, ' said Moist. 'They're only a sort of intelligent spell. They don't even have to have a shape. We'll print them on the higher denominations.

There are pieces of you that will always be with me.

Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things... one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority.

If you want to beat Donald Trump - then you need to be the candidate that is not the establishment in your thinking, in the way you're presenting yourself.

Consciousness of exclusion through naming is acute. Identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic.

I never have time to myself; it's the one thing about my life I would probably hope to change.

Woman is the unfathomable, incalculable mystery, the problem we men can never hope to solve.

I believe that every human being has mental challenges.

Honor is the moral conscience of the great.

Fear of ideas makes us impotent and ineffective.