I think the Greek New Testament is the strongest and most successful misreading of a great prior text in the entire history of influence.

I want you to tell all these people that I wanted more time to spend with them. Tell them I meant to, tell them I wanted to hear what they said and tell them what was on my mind.

He is a great artist. He may be the finest artist among American writers since William Faulkner and Henry James. There's the endless variety of modes he works in. His style, his stance, his point of view.

I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.

Readers have to be sought out and won to the light of the page, poem by poem, one by one by one.

I'm not so arrogant to think I'm the only guide someone needs ... but I might be the guide that someone needs.