I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing.

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.

War is always an adventure to those who've never seen it.

Your mission in life is to determine what You believe—not to accept what someone else tells you to believe.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

The best way to write a novel is to do it behind your own back.

Through the years our business has been killing;-it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of lif eis limited to death.

We can never go back.

Let none count themselves wise who have not with the nerves of their imagination felt the pain of the vivisected.

I'll accept commissions from anyone who isn't frightened by my proposals.

Twitter lets me hear from a lot of people in a very short period of time.

The man had added to his body in a way that was brave and timeless and beyond adornment.