But I'm not ready to stop listening to the screwed-up inner voice that's been ordering me around for a lifetime. My head thinks it can kill me... and go on living without me.

I've never contended that I had a really horrible life.

I always say that a poet loves the world, and the prose writer needs to create an alternative world.

I'm bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A's you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable because Lord knows they'll try -- without let up -- to break you.

I don't have a copy of my books, and the degree to which I never read them is profound. I never look.

How much smaller the large places are once we're grown up, when we have car keys and credit cards.

I get so lonely sometimes, I could put a box on my head and mail myself to a stranger.