"I longed to know the world's name."

"A young man’s ambition — to get along in the world and make a place for himself — half your life goes that way, till …"

"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 w…"

"Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make,…"

"The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world."

"In separateness only does love learn definition."

"Tell me a story. In this century, and moment, of mania, Tell me a story. Make it a story of great distances, and star…"

"I don’t expect you’ll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan."

"I know that any discussion of the relation of this poem to its historical materials is, in one perspective, irrelevan…"

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