I believe that all my work explores the human desire or obsession for utopias, and the structure of all my works is the search for utopias lost and rediscovered.

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.

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

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

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

I would teach from nine to four, sleep an hour, and write from six until midnight, night after night.

I believe that all my work explores the human desire or obsession for utopias, and the structure of all my works is the search for utopias lost and rediscovered.