I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step.

My first advice would be to read, read, read, which sounds interesting coming in a digital age, but it's so much easier to listen to a poem than it is to sit down and actually read it and to hear it in your head and that is something that every poet or aspiring poet needs to be able to do, I think to hear it in their head.

For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about the lack of respect artists got here. In my heart, I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art.

To write for PC reasons, because you think you ought to be dealing with this subject, is never going to yield anything that is really going to matter to anyone else. It has to matter to you.

I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers.

Listen how they say your name. If they can't say that right, there's no way they're going to know how to treat you proper, neither.

I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.