James Dickey

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.

To be precise and reckless: that is the consummation devoutly to be wished.

I want a fever, in poetry: a fever, and tranquillity.

I'm a big action junkie. I grew up on the '80s action movies - the bad ones and the good ones.

I do know that detachment is important. A surgeon can't be weeping into the open wound.

I have written about the dispossessed, immigrants, the condition of women who do not enjoy the same legal rights as men, the Palestinians who are deprived of their land and condemned to exile.