Southern California, where the American Dream came too true.

There is an ecstatic mechanism in birds that makes them fly upwards in spite of worms.

They were looking for a stable, but we didn't have one. In fact, we weren't very stable ourselves.

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.

If you would be a poet, write living newspapers. Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance for bullshit.

Don't patronize the chain bookstores. Every time I see some author scheduled to read and sign his books at a chain bookstore, I feel like telling him he's stabbing the independent bookstores in the back.

We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.