Her attachment to language was earthy, physical, and immediate. Pretty words you could eat.

Sylvia had begun her month in New York with princessy pomp and fanfare….Her departure on June 27 was entirely different. She left New York shaken, depleted, and utterly alone.

...she could not stick by the golden mean...was always anxious to experiment in extremes...to find out what was enough by indulging herself in too much." (Gordon Lameyer)

These were the new girls of New York- complete with rapid heartbeats from too much nicotine and coffee. They were nervous and fluttery but completely alluring- the new face of urban femininity.

Judgement is so often a thwarted, frustrated expression of envy.

New York is unruly, tangled. The city woos first, then mangles, then pastes back together in a fresh, dazzling mosaic.

The years teach much the days never know.

It is a beautiful and scary thing to sit open-handed and let all your plans float away like dust.

You can love everyone, but you can never hurt anyone else without hurting yourself. You will burn yourself for the rest of your life with this fire and agony.

I'm fourteen years old; that's almost half-way to thirty. I need my own space.

I don't care who the student is, teachers should never be condescending. That should be the first rule in the teacher handbook.

Unless the great majority of Americans not only have, but believe they have, a fair chance, the better American future will be dangerously compromised.

There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.

One could go on revising a prose page forever whereas there is a point in a poem when one knows it is done forever.

I have never been concerned about winning the Ballon d'Or or being the best player in the world. The best player is already here and that's Messi. And now I can see him from close up and help him.

It's hard to imagine, but we cant think of HIV/AIDS as being somebody else's story. It could be any of ours.