If you are made for flight, intended for it, you had better find a pursuer, fast. Otherwise, all that fleeing is going nowhere.

- Dan Chiasson

I seem to thrive by destroying the last thing I did, in a kind of cartoon Nietzsche way. Emerson says in "Experience" something like "every ultimate …

- Dan Chiasson

I feel most myself when I'm reading, but by that I don't mean that I'm most comfortable when I'm reading. I feel most fully a person who's torn betwe…

- Dan Chiasson

The main thing in poetry criticism is that I have all these opinions, and I love having something to do with them. And I think it's important that pe…

- Dan Chiasson

I do care about the consequences of being negative toward people who are powerful. But I'm more afraid of not being taken seriously as a critic - by …

- Dan Chiasson

The issue is that when you're a critic it's hard to tell the difference between the thrill of denouncing and telling the truth. Telling the truth to …

- Dan Chiasson

I write to get myself writing. That and read Wallace Stevens' "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" for the umpteenth time. Certain authors for me, cert…

- Dan Chiasson

I treat myself as one of the sources. And, again, I think that’s accurate. One of the poets I read most frequently is myself. I really do. I read my …

- Dan Chiasson

It's often said that elephants are the most human of animals - there's something comical about their acquiescence, and tragic also. The long elephant…

- Dan Chiasson