In Plato's republic, poets were considered subversive, a danger to the republic. I kind of relish that role. So I see my present role as a gadfly, to use my soapbox to promote my various ideas and obsesions.

I didn’t know that painters and writers retired. They’re like soldiers – they just fade away.

I was on television a couple of years ago and the reporter asked me, "How does it feel being on mainstream media? It's not often poets get on mainstream media." I said, "Well I think you're the dominant media, the dominant culture, but you're not the mainstream media. The mainstream media is still the high culture of intellectuals: writers, readers, editors, librarians, professors, artists, art critics, poets, novelists, and people who think. They are the mainstream culture, even though you may be the dominant culture."

I once started out to walk around the world but ended up in Brooklyn, that Bridge was too much for me.

If you're too open-minded; your brains will fall out.

Invent a new language anyone can understand.

A lot of manuscripts that come in, you wonder by what outrageous fantasy the author believes that this should be pressed into print.