"She was the Judy Garland of American poetry."

"I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think, If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry, I can do that."

"I want a fever, in poetry: a fever, and tranquillity."

"Real vision demands that we make tough choices. Real vision is responsible and it is paid for."

"I am really drawn to damaged characters, and I have a lot of sympathy for them. Making those complicated characters empathetic is something to strive for. It's too easy to create a good guy or a good girl."

"I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it."

"A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache."