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"I think I'm a very good reader of poetry, but obviously, like everybody, I have a set of criteria for reading poems, and I'm not shy about presenting them, so if people ask for my critical response to a poem, I tell them what works and why, and what doesn't work and why."
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"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."

"There is no other enjoyment like reading."

"Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes."

"The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination."

"Sometimes it is the reader that sucks, not the book."

"Books are always good company if you have the right sort. Let me pick out some for you.' And Mrs. Jo made a bee-line to the well-laden shelves, which were the joy of her heart and the comfort of her life."

"Kindle, isn't it? the waitress asked. "I got one for Christmas, and I love it. I'm reading my way through all of Jodi Picoult's books. "Oh, probably not all of them, Wesley said. "Huh? Why not? "She's probably got another one done already. That's all I meant. "And James Patterson's probably written one since he got up this morning! she said, and went off chortling."
Explore more quotes by Diane Wakoski

"I'm perfectly happy when I look out at an audience and it's all women. I always think it's kind of odd, but then, more women than men, I think, read and write poetry."

"I do not read newspapers. I do not watch television. I am not interested in current events, although I will occasionally discuss them if other people want to discuss them."

"I think that's what poetry does. It allows people to come together and identify with a common thing that is outside of themselves, but which they identify with from the interior."

"I'm passing on a tradition of which I am part. There's a long line of poets who went before me, and I'm another one, and I'm hoping to pass that on to other younger, or newer, poets than myself."

"I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry."

"PC stuff just lowers the general acceptance of good work and replaces it with bogus poetry that celebrates values that in themselves are probably quite worthy."

"From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not."

"One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves."

"High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this."
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