When people ask me how to find happiness in life I tell them, First learn how to cook.

The religion of the short poem, in every age and in every literature, has a single commandment: Less is always more. The short poem rejects preamble and summary. It's about all and everything, the metaphysics of a few words surrounded by much silence. …The short poem is a match flaring up in a dark universe.

I'm not a stickler for truth. To me, lying in poetry is much more fun. I'm against lying in life, in principle, in any other activity except poetry.

Found objects, chance creations, ready-mades (mass-produced items promoted into art objects, such as Duchamp's "Fountain"-urinal as sculpture) abolish the separation between art and life. The commonplace is miraculous if rightly seen.

If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.

The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.

Making art in America is about saving one's soul.