My advice is, do not try to inhabit another's soul. You have your own.

Being a writer requires an intoxication with language.

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

That's my only defense against this world: to build a sentence out of it.

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.

I don't see gender as the most significant fact of human existence.

I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.