The first book that really knocked me out was the 'Brothers Karamazov.' I read it when I was a senior in high school.

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

Sometimes from this hillside just after sunset The rim of the sky takes on a tinge Of the palest green, like the flesh of a cucumber When you peel it carefully.

It was one of the great mass achievements of American civilization, and we did it because we thought if you were going to have a democratic form of government, people had to be able to read and understand complicated ideas on their own.

Once you figure out something about the watershed, you'll find out where the schools are going to hell, and the kids aren't learning, and there is no money. Social issues, class issues, and environmental issues were all connected.

As poet laureate, I was asked to be a spokesman for literature. Then what I decided is I am a spokesman for this other imagination of community - not the one showing up in the market. Nobody was tending to the way we're imaginatively connected to each other.

At some level, you have to be able to say, "This is my task." It's in small, local ways that you keep yourself alive and refresh ideas that are always going into dead abstraction.