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.

Jane Austen is at the end of the line that begins with Samuel Richardson, which takes wonder and magic out of the novel, treats not the past but the present.

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's somebody doing something because I pushed them in that direction.

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.

I liked Camille Paglia. I liked her even better when I heard her talk.

Kafka is still unrecognized. He thought he was a comic writer.

I have, I admit, a low tolerance for detached chronicling and cool analysis.