I do not think a similar goal, to attain fame, drove me when I was a child and young woman.

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.

For our kind, death is only the beginning.

A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.

When the winter comes, the summer shines infinitely in our hearts!

Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god but a great rock and the sun a hot rock.

The great corporations of this country were not founded by ordinary people. They were founded by people with extraordinary intelligence, ambition, and aggressiveness.

Nature is always wise in every part.

Existence is.. well.. what does it matter? I exist on the best terms I can. The past is now part of my future. The present is well out of hand.

I love cooking and spending time in mine.

I don't care who you are. When you sit down to write the first page of your screenplay, in your head, you're also writing your Oscar acceptance speech.

I think it's hard for any parent to see anything negative said or done against your child and, when you can't directly do something about it, it's hard.