"One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime."

"The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end."

"Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques."

"Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It's delightful to distort size, to see something that's tiny as though it were vast."

"First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And, ever since, it grew more clean and white."

"I think as time goes by you'll get female comics who are weirder - you'll get a female Mighty Boosh."

"Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so."

"It is a steadfast truth that time is the most impartial judge; it reveals all pretenses and rewards all patience — an essential principle for the reflective life."