Anybody in the next centuries wanting to know what it was like to be a poet in the middle of the 20th century should read Kaddish.

The novel doesn't come into existence until certain methods of reproducing fiction come along.

I admire Ginsberg as a poet, despite the fact that he seems not to know when he is being good and when he is bad. But he will last, or at least those poems will last.

Henry Miller wrote novels, but he calls his protagonist Henry, often Henry Miller, and his books are in this gray area between memoir and novel.

When I was 12 years old, someone took me to see Martha Graham. It was nothing like what I thought of as serious dancing and even then I knew I was having a great experience. It was as if somebody was moving through space like no one ever did before.

I never met anybody in my life who says, I want to be a critic. People want to be a fireman, poet, novelist.

I gave up writing blurbs because you make one friend and 200 enemies.