Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.

Like an ox-cart driver in monsoon season or the skipper of a grounded ship, one must sometimes go forward by going back.

In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.

More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.

The story of your life is not your life; it's your story.

Is man a savage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile Manners? Or is savagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?

Those rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state.

History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant

Nothing is loathsomer than the self-loathing of a self one loathes.

Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people.

I mean, there's times to rock and roll, and I love that too. But I think my first love is acoustic music.

There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry.

There's still nearly the same amount of slavery, if not more, in the world today, as there was at the height of the slave trade.

But, yes, I learned everything working in theater. I learned the importance of community - I was constantly going to play readings, stand-up nights, improv. nights.

I think I've had a very privileged life.

If Dracula would be happy there, so will your wine.

The biggest thing is to create a product that consumers find useful. As more and more people like something, it becomes harder and harder to have a conspiracy theory about it.

Who speaks reason to his fellow man bestows it upon them.

When our dreams seem to go sour or remain unfulfilled, hopelessness can dominate our lives-or we can hold on with open hands, knowing that we have hope because God is faithful.

Frogs eat Butterflies, Snakes eat Frogs, Hogs eat Snakes, Men eat Hogs.