I did not want to live out my life in the strenuous effort to hold a ghost world together. It was plain as the stars that time herself moved in grand tidal sweeps rather than the tick-tocks we suffocate within, and that I must reshape myself to fully inhabit the earth rather than dawdle in the sump of my foibles.

I'm actually forced to write about Michigan because as a native of that state it's the place I know best.

Life is an honor, albeit anonymously delivered.

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.

A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed.

All artists as a type seem to suffer a great deal, but then so do miners.

The days are stacked against what we think we are.