I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing.

One of the biggest changes that ever occurred in my life was going from the isolation of working part-time as a house painter in Henderson County, to Cornell, where everybody was a literary person.

Young writers only take off when they find their subjects. Since almost everyone has a family and stories about family, that is often a place to start.

In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible.

I write as a way of keeping myself going. You build your life around writing, and it's what gets you through. So it's partly just curiosity to see what you can do.

Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.