Yes, the mistrust of poetry has a long history, for a variety of reasons, but they all come down to sentiment and invention over fact and truth. Figurative language is suspicious.

An animal of only instinct, Johnny Ferret, has in his actions drama, but no theater; theater requires that you draw a circle around the action and observe it from outside the circle; in other words, self-consciousness is theater.

I like to read because it kills me.

Real things are made things. Are you a real person, or did your parents make you up? Is that a real mountain or did the forces of the universe make it up? Is the virtual reality of the Internet real or did imaginative people like Steve Jobs make it up?

It is sad, is it not, that no one today displays an interest in the art of shrunken heads. Men, women, and children walk on the streets, they cross fields and enter forests, they run along the edges of oceans, but none of them, to the best of my knowledge, are thinking about shrunken heads.

Although all poets aspire to be birds, no bird aspires to be a poet.

And who among us is not neurotic, and has never complained that they are not understood? Why did you come here, to this place, if not in the hope of being understood, of being in some small way comprehended by your peers, and embraced by them in a fellowship of shared secrets? I don’t know about you, but I just want to be held.

Art has always been aware of itself as art.

Someone reading a book is a sign of order in the world.

Something unpronounceable followed by a long silence points out my life is becoming a landscape.