Affirmative action has a negative effect on our society when it means counting us like so many beans and dividing us into separate piles.

I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom on the stairs everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.

No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.

I never saw any of my dad's stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

My mother used to take me to flea markets in my stroller and I would just rummage through the piles. You've got to dig through the overstuffed racks that everyone else just walks by. It's the only way to find the cool stuff.