“How much of twentieth-century poetry, how much of my own poetry, is the cry of the damned?”

“Even speech was for them was a debased form of silence; how much more futile is poetry which is a debased form of speech.”

“How can poetry be something we study, but also something that makes us cry?”

“Remember there's always a grain of truth in the prophecies, no matter how much poetry has been frosted on top." ~ Lucas to Helen”

“If I wouldn't of spent so much time shooting spit wads at my English teacher I'd know how to punctuate good thing I normally write poetry.”

“In fiction, the characters have their own lives. They may start as a gloss on the author’s life, but they move on from there. In poetry, especially confessional poetry but in other poetry as well, the poet is not writing characters so much as emotional truth wrapped in metaphor. Bam! Pow! A shot to the gut.”