Poetry and fiction have grieved for a century now over the loss of some vitality which they think they see in a past from which we are by now irrevocably alienated.

People who deliver their work in poetry slams have a lot of vitality, and they are more dramatic than the institutional/academic poets.

I totally alienated some reporters as I retreated.

Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.

The difference between the Parthenon and the World Trade Center, between a French wine glass and a German beer mug, between Bach and John Philip Sousa, between Sophocles and Shakespeare, between a bicycle and a horse, though explicable by historical moment, necessity, and destiny, is before all a difference of imagination.

I was thought to be retarded as a child, and all the evidence indicates that I was.