I'm very staid compared to my students, actually.

Yeah, I mean, I put work out there for people to use and I'm grateful when you use it.

I found my voice was a reaction to all that voice stuff.

I'm really fascinated and you know I've been wondering about that usage of language, various breathing techniques and why in these practices language is being used in another way.

One of the reasons I think the ultra right-wing has such power in this country is that no one talks out.

We've been very bad at understanding why the right-wing does things.

There's a backlash against womyn that's really bad right now.

Traveling around I don't think people are that horrible, I think they just don't know.

Some of the stuff about Yogi energy is really fascinating.

Well, I think writing is basically about time and rhythm. Like with jazz. You have your basic melody and then you just riff off of it. And the riffs are about timing.

I think the best thing in cases of censorship or things like this is to get as much media as possible.

I mean, once work's out there it's meant to be used.

I'm very staid compared to my students, actually.

I might be writing what people expect me to write, writing from that place where I might be ruled by economic considerations. To overcome that, I started working with my dreams, because I'm not so censored when I use dream material.

I understand that postmodern literature probably means people like DeLillo, The Fiction Collective, but I don't get it that those writers are really influenced by postmodern theorists.

We get on the bandwagon in all sorts of ways - you know minor ways and major ways - like what you've just encountered which isn't censorship exactly, it was something sort of uglier in a way.

And I'm working at trying to find a kind of language where I won't be so easily modulated by expectation.

I write it to get it out of me. I don't write it to remember it.

I question: do we really understand the differences between modernist and postmodernist?

First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic.

And internalization is used in this country as a very effective political tool.

I understand that when people read my books that there's something there - but I don't identify with it.

But I still don't have a clear idea of what my voice is.

I mean, they censor your work when they're scared of it.

Well, fear and homophobia are both pervasive.

That's what the right-wing is good at: figuring out the left wing.

The literary culture, if you examine it, the high literary culture is that which preserves the government and you know it's really the talk for those who have.

But guys such as Allen and William are more supportive than most men.

I think what we have in this country is a little more dangerous in a way because it can't be seen fully. It's sorta internal censorship. We censor each other.

On the surface we all act like we all love each other and we're free and easy, and actually we're far more moralistic than any other society I've ever lived in.

I think it's really important to find out why people hurt you or try to oppose you or whatever.

I wasn't really into body piercings until I found that about half my female students had them.

You can do whatever you want with my work.

You know I've had work banned.

Dreams are manifestations of identities.

Whereas the slums in Hamburg are the slums of its sailors Berlin is a big slum.

I find waiting unbearable because it makes me passive and negates me. I hate being nothing.

I tell my students to try early in life to find an unattainable objective.

Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.

I started thinking about my relationship with my students; I'm this guy who comes in from book - and movie - land and descends on angel wings into their classroom.

Students don't know who Mark Twain was because he wasn't on the test.

The lopsided attitudes of college professors pose a serious challenge to learning because students are so susceptible to becoming lopsided sheep.

Our campaign is powered by college students who are not about to let the first genocide of the 21st century happen on their watch.

I think the world is run by 'C' students.

When the students are occupied, they're not juvenile delinquents. I believe that education is a capital investment.

All students can learn.

Community colleges are one of America's great social inventions a gateway to the future for first time students looking for an affordable college education, and for mid-career students looking to get ahead in the workplace.

There are better ways we can transform this virulent hatred - by living our ideals, the Peace Corps, exchange students, teachers, exporting our music, poetry, blue jeans.

Currently, only 70 percent of our high school students earn diplomas with their peers, and less than one-third of our high school students graduate prepared for success in a four-year college.