I came to realize this weird projection: you are much more passionate about hating something outside of you when you know that something is also in you.

Writing a poem is unwriting a knot, like untying a shoelace that is clubbing your foot.

New formalism is writing with language as flow, like the flow from a dam, running through a desert that has had no rain for decades.

Poetry must speak of others, in order to speak for the poet's imagination, in order to speak of itself; it is slowed down by poetics after its flight is over.

As I grew older - and even when I was younger - it had puzzled me why I continued and continue to be heterosexual.

Poetry has roots, but they are sometimes cut off and still poetry is written.

At a certain point, the struggles with teaching and mothering and so on and so forth, those decline, those lessen.

I'm in my 60s, and a cancer scare just makes you more aware of mortality.

Working women went through a time when they believed that.

[My muse] she's impatient with me, because I don't do what I should do: sit down and write.

Agency over one's sexual self - and the articulation of that kind of agency - might seem transgressive to readers who don't expect it in a woman's text.

To confront death every day, to see it for yourself, you have to love the living

Talented people almost always know full well the excellence that is in them.

Start to become active in what u love DOING. People admire action, courageℜ happiness far more than they admire a size 2

The Lord's way to help those in temporal need requires people who out of love have consecrated themselves and what they have to God and to His work.

I did get to work with Anthony Hopkins on 'The Human Stain.' If I ever manage to accomplish a quarter of what he's achieved, I'll have had one hell of a career.

Bigotry is surely an exportable American commodity, especially when it comes to race.

Around us, life bursts with miracles, a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops.

Two turtle doves will show thee Where my cold ashes lie And sadly murmuring tell thee How in tears I did die

For without you, I swear, the town Has become like a prison to me. Distraction and the mountain And the desert, all I desire.

I chose to publish the first 'Shopaholic' book under a pseudonym because I wanted it to be judged on its own merits.