[Gertrude Stein] really needed someone like Virgil Thomson, whom she respected, to sit on her a bit and make her devise some plot.

- James Laughlin

Every now and then, I strike something that just goes click, you know, in my head. As Gertrude Stein used to say, it rings the bell, and I feel, this…

- James Laughlin

I think we will always have the impulse towards visual poetry with us, and I wouldn't agree with Bly that it's a bad thing. It depends on the ability…

- James Laughlin

I think that is where poetry reading becomes such an individual thing. I mean I have friend who like poets who just don't say anything to me at all, …

- James Laughlin

I often feel I'm working in a vacuum, or in a country where few readers hear the sounds.

- James Laughlin

With me it's the whole thing, it's the conceit, the idea, what the poem is saying. And it goes on just as long as is necessary to say what needs to b…

- James Laughlin

I try to write in plain brown blocks of American speech but occasionally set in an ancient word or a strange word just to startle the reader a little…

- James Laughlin

I think one ages and one dates. I tend to have a good deal of difficulty in liking some of the new poets.

- James Laughlin

It's all well and good to say that Germans were all responsible for the concentration camps, but I don't think they were. I think that was the work o…

- James Laughlin