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!

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.

It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded.

The First Book: Go ahead, it won't bite. Well... maybe a little. More a nip, like. A tingle. It's pleasurable, really. You see, it keeps on opening. You may fall in. Sure, it's hard to get started; remember learning to use knife and fork? Dig in: you'll never reach bottom. It's not like it's the end of the world -- just the world as you think you know it.

When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.

It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.