Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there.

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.

The higher you soar the view is much better, and the giant in you appears. Go forth and conquer your dreams.

Fear is natural, but love is eternal. Never be fearful of love.

God’s Word is the living seed that brings new birth. It is the milk that nurtures the new life of a young Christian and the meat that builds the muscle of a mature believer.

Many today view love and doctrine as enemies, or at best as rivals.

In wartime, everyone loves a soldier, and a wounded hero even more so.

You can drive a car by looking in the rear view mirror as long as nothing is ahead of you. Not enough software professionals are engaged in forward thinking.

I'm about as healthy as a person can be. I quit smoking seven or eight years ago.

Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other.

The only thing that changes as we evolve is the idea of what serves us.

I've spent the past month in Washington D.C. and it is terrific to be back in America.