Every writer has his favorite coterie of enemies: Mine is the East Coast literati -- those prep school playmates and their Ivy League colleagues.

Lightning streaks like gunfire through the clouds, volleys of thunder shake the air.

The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads. Laughter, praise, honors, money, and the love of beautiful girls will be your only reward.

Capitalism: Nothing so mean could be right. Greed is the ugliest of the capital sins.

One thing worse than self-hatred is chiggers.

In America, as elsewhere, the general irritability level keeps rising.

I don't see how poetry can ever be easy... Real poetry, the thick, dense, intense, complicated stuff that lives and endures, requires blood sweat; blood and sweat are essential elements in poetry as well as behind it.