I have spoken to expert audiences occasionally, but then no audience is expert over the whole range of things I want to explore.

You pay your money, you take your choice. I get the audience my language attracts and I lose the ones it repels.

There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.

Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives.

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.

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

I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.