Katy Lederer quotes:

The ghosts of Rilke and Wordsworth--along with the 300+ MFA programs, which now seem to employ all Living Poets--have misled the American public egregiously into thinking that poets are morally pure and/or useless.

It is bizarre that some people can't understand how a serious poet could work at a finance firm. Goethe was a bureaucrat. Eliot worked as a banker.

Poetry is God's work.

We live in a capitalist system; anyone who believes they are above this system or purer than this system, even while shopping at the cute organic market across the street or taking a hiking vacation to Guatemala, is certifiable.

Today, from the bridge, the East River is sparkling. The money is swirling around the tall buildings like tides or like tithes, And I wonder, does anyone swim in this river, I wonder, does anyone pray?

I do think most poets are in denial about what the real taboos in writing are--the real boundaries.

I think it is extremely interesting to think that, in some cases, vice might be, finally, more redemptive than virtue.

It should be everyone's right in a capitalist system to have some way to take advantage of compound interest.

To think of the myriad ways that we live is to think of the ways that we die: Delinquent in our brains, in debt-- If we settle, then, our due account and walk through the forest, Will we finally be free?

I do not play the instrument In longing but in quest Not to be undertaken Not to be lost In a forest of bliss.

I remember when I was writing my memoir and I was worried about what other people would think when they read it, and my mother, who can be this incredibly wise person, said that it really didn't matter because strangers who read it would never meet me anyway, and people I knew were aware of my secrets.

I'm more interested in the writing than in the content per se (good writing can be about wallpaper and I'll devour it).

It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

The sum of the parts equals less than the whole. Or the howl. Or the how. Or the hole.

There is, in the heart, the hard-rendering profit. As if we were plucking the leaves from the trees.

What separates the professionally successful ... from all the rest is their ability to stay steady, to have stamina. It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

When I moved to New York, the reputation just followed me, and I am regularly invited to play in home games, by writers in particular, though finance folk also invite me on occasion.