When fiction writers like my poems I feel like I've hit the jackpot.

I am like a table that eats its own legs off because it’s fallen in love with the floor.

The cool thing about having a book is that it takes on its own life. Once it's in the world, you can't follow it. You'd have to have a pretty fantastic surveillance system to track its migration.

Place is extremely important to my work because I am always pulling landscape imagery into my poems.

I have no precise idea of who makes up my readership. I'm surprised when I discover people have read my poems at all.

Confessional poetry is, to my mind, more slippery than poems that are sloppily autobiographical; I find the confessional mode much more akin to dramatic monologue.

One of the reasons poetry is such an amazing genre to work with is because it constantly reinvents itself and re-negotiates its terms with the reader.

One cannot have "success" in poetry. If I wanted to be successful, I'd have become a lawyer.

I've just always loved animals. So I've often thought that if I weren't a writer I'd work for some nonprofit organization that does something positive for animals.

I place a lot of emphasis on process and revision because I believe that all of my students can become better writers through hard work.

I like it when poems are challenging, when they concern matters important and personal to the author.

In fact, I wouldn't really call this a Gospel album, I call it more an inspirational album.

Let's quit fiddling with religion and do something to bring the world to Christ.

The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things.

It's all bullshit on Everest these days.

I am for peace. And I am for a negotiated peace. But this accord is not a just peace.

I love it when a character requires me to look less than my red-carpet best.

I could invent another world. I'm not terribly keen on this one.

I was trying to do like a spaghetti western but using World War II iconography.

Poke gave him life. Ender gave it meaning.