What is ironic is that Allen Ginsberg's importance was in its twilight for so many years that it took his death to bring it to the front page. He electrified an entire world!

I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person.

I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on.

I was pirouette and flourish, I was filigree and flame. How could I count my blessings when I didn't know their names?

People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable.

Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature.

If they don't read, if they don't love reading; if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer