If you know anything about James Whitcomb Riley, you know that Little Orphan Annie is one of the most fantastic characters who ever lived in America before Charlie Chaplin.

Every heart is the other heart. Every soul is the other soul. Every face is the other face. The individual is the one illusion.

Dreiser... I love... and almost wouldn't speak to anyone who ever attacked him.

At the age of 18 all young poets are sure they will be dead at 21 - of old age.

I'm as much influenced by Joseph Smith and the Mormons as I am, more so, than by Eliot. Actually, I'm much more influenced by the poetry of the Mormons.

I try to teach my students style, but always as a part of life, not as ornament. Style has to come out of communicating coherent thought, not in sticking little flowers on speeches. Style and substance and a sense of life are the things literature is composed of. One must use one's own personality in relationship to life and language, of course, and everyone has such a relationship. Some people find it, some don't find it, but it's there.

The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.