"Well, we all start thinking we're going to be Romantic rock stars, but then reality hits and you realize no one reads you but other poets."

"The poetry community here has been extraordinarily welcoming."

"Then I discovered I loved writing poetry more than fiction."

"I've often entertained paranoid suspicions about my fridge and what it's been doing to my poetry when I'm not looking, but I never even considered that my fan was thinking about me."

"The fans of 'The Hunger Games,' of the book, are very passionate. It's funny: Even at my concerts there are people holding up 'Cinna' signs."

"I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity."

"When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed - from song lyric to tragic speech - must make its point, as it were, without reference back."

"I got beat up by the comic-book kids when I was younger! They were cooler than me. Talk about levels of geekdom, I was a couple rungs below the kids who read comic books. Yeah. Not so cool, man."