When I wrote I took on the role of the despondent and difficult to understand person. Whereas in life, I was easy to understand, to the point of being simple-minded maybe.

One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.

A motto I've adopted is, if at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.

The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.

Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you.

Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

Write the poem only you can write.

But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.

But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest.

While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the windowpane.

Like the sun, we are attracted to people who shine with warmth and brightness.

Basketball was always my first love, but once I had a good year as a senior, I figured the next step was to play college football.

"God save our gracious Queen": Why would we invoke a non-specific deity to bail out these unelected spongers?

It also didn't take me long to decide that Tri-Cities wasn't for me, and that I wasn't going to go there to play basketball.

Writing a book is like masturbation, and making a movie is like an orgy.

Without spiritual landmarks, mankind wanders . . . Without the word of God, we walk in circles.

Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.

Molded salads are best served in situations where they have little or no competition ... Like television, gelatin is too often a vehicle for limp leftovers that couldn't make it anywhere else.

Critics have done the wine industry a lot of good overall.

The preparations for my new voyage prevented the possiblity of my paying that attention to the correction of my errors, that I should otherwise have done.