I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James.

The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.

I had no idea where these kids at a small private college in the San Fernando Valley were coming from, why they were coming to hear me, or what they needed to know.

When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience.

My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path.

I've always had a strong feeling for the Statue of Liberty, because it became the statue of my personal liberty.

I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker.