I have long admired Ron Whitehead. He is crazy as nine loons, and his poetry is a dazzling mix of folk wisdom and pure mathematics

Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for -- but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him.

I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

We must have football. What would this country be without football in October?

Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.

There is not much mental distance between a feeling of having been screwed and the ethic of total retaliation, or at least the kind of random revenge that comes with outraging the public decency.