I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.

In America they have to know just what you are-- novelist, poet, playwright... Well, I've been all of them... I think poems and novels and stories spring from the same seed. It's not like, say, playing polo and knitting.

Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They're inexpensive and easy to procure.

When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a ham trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can.

The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it.

The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.

The poem . . . is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.