“There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.”

“You should not confuse your career with your life.”

“salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb.”

“The things I learned from the army - and I think it was a lesson for life - was how to work in unison with other people. How to take responsibility. Things like that I learned in the army.”

“I am very, very sorry for the lives lost in Iraq. I think it was a very noble job that your army and your people did in Iraq.”

“The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.”

“You never realize how tacky your furniture is till you try to give it to the Salvation Army and they won't take it.”

“I've got mixed feelings about poetry cause done well poetry is fantastic. But not many people are capable of doing it well. I think you should have some kind of license to perform poetry. A poetic license perhaps.”

“I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.”

“One of the satisfactions of fiction, or drama, or poetry from the perpetrator’s point of view is the selective order it imposes upon the confusion of a lived life; out of the daily welter of sensation and impression these few verbal artifacts, these narratives or poems, are salvaged and carefully presented.”