What does "poet laureate" mean? Nothing. It means a person with laurel branches twined around his head. Which is not something people do much now.

I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.

Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.

For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo.

Printed books usually outlive bookstores and the publishers who brought them out. They sit around, demanding nothing, for decades. That's one of their nicest qualities - their brute persistence.

I've never been a fast reader. I'm fickle; I don't finish books I start; I put a book aside for five, ten years and then take it up again.

Haven't you felt a peculiar sort of worry about the chair in your living room that no one sits in?

Poetry is prose in slow motion.

Spoon the sauce over the ice cream. It will harden. This is what you have been working for.

But spending your life concentrating on death is like watching a whole movie and thinking only about the credits that are going to roll at the end. It’s a mistake of emphasis.

Shoes are the first adult machines we are given to master.

Talent is a faucet. When it is on, one must write. Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance.

If you want to succeed, make it a study first then practice it and finally live it daily.

Ingenuity, plus courage, plus work, equals miracles.

I find myself to be quite sarcastic, and I wouldn't want to be with someone who didn't get that.

A new theory is guilty until proven innocent, and the pre-existing theory innocent until proven guilty ... Continental drift was guilty until proven innocent.

Damn, tell me where did all the magic go? I followed the rules and told you everything you had to know

The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people.

You talk to the farmers, the ranchers, our small community bankers, and boy, one of the No. 1 issues is the regulations coming out of Washington.

Never comment on a woman's rear end. Never use the words 'large' or 'size' with 'rear end'. Never. Avoid the area altogether. Trust me.

I think the best comedic actors don't play it for comedy, they play it for reality. Then you find it funny because it's real. Playing the genre is the worst thing you can do - it's embarrassing.