Death teaches us to live; it gives us a boundary to map our living within. Death's hammer breaks through the mirror separating us from light.

There's a fine line between writing the poem and the poem writing itself. You have to be there and not be there, too.

I owe my own fluency with language to Brooklyn. Everyone talked about everything, from the Dodgers to the revolution.

I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.

I'm going to keep on dealing with the supernatural in a lot of ways.

I've finally learnt how to say, 'No comment'. To appear in the tabloids is a real learning curve and a steep one at that. You had better learn quick or you get burnt.

No more excuses. I can't blame anything on my parents. I'm responsible for my mistakes and my choices.

It's painful to consider anything but writing.

The vine that has grown old on an old tree falls with the ruin of that tree, and through that bad companionship must perish with it.

A star needs all the rest she can get.

Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.

If I am a Pariah, I will be all the more glad, for I am the disciple of a man, who - the Brahmin of Brahmins - wanted to cleanse the house of a Pariah. (here "the man" means Ramakrishna)

In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth.