in the beginning William Shakespeare was a baby, and knew absolutely nothing. He couldn't even speak.

Poetry is sentimental to begin with. To write a sentimental poem is an act of redundancy.

There’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. Writers know that. I have never met a writer who does not crave to be alone. We have to be alone to do what we do.

Polar fleece is a plush, spongy, totally artificial material that weighs nothing and conveys no quality of warmth or coolness; in fact, you can wear it in the most bitter weather or in the hottest heat. Polar fleece looks neither flimsy and light nor hearty and warm. It has no historical, cultural, or physical association with a place, a season, a society, or any living thing. It is the first existential fabric - eminentaly useful, meaningless, dissociated and weird.

[On filling out a grant application:] I seek an extended period of time, free from all distractions, so that I might be free to be distracted.

I remember I was a child, and when I grew up I was a poet. It all happened at sixty miles an hour and on days when the clock stopped and all of humanity fit into a little chapel, into a pinecone, a shot of ouzo, a snail's shell, a piece of soggy rye on the pavement.

The industrial world destroys nature not because it doesn’t love it but because it is not afraid of it.