People cry at weddings for the same reason they cry at happy endings: because they so desperately want to believe in something they know is not credible.

Blank pages inspire me with terror.

Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.

Our problem right now is that we're so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there's a little utopia.

making final judgements about poets, cities or regions on the basis of an anthology is always dangerous: anthologies are mirages created, finally, by their editors.

I've never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn't mean they're going to be that way.

Paper isn’t important. It’s the words on them that are important.