I like to use research to enlarge the poem. And sometimes a rhetorical or syntactical gesture stitches the poem along.

It's extremely important that, as writers, we give a voice to those who don't have voices, including the other animals that we share the planet with and the places that are endangered or being lost.

Once you realize that human actions affect every bit of earth and sky, you realize that the environment isn't just what surrounds us - it's all one whole.

I am a result of what has happened on this planet - how could I find the art to say that? I can't, and yet, I am drawn to it because of the enormity of it. That seems really important.

Bringing science into poetry is one way of acknowledging some of the richest stuff that is in my cultural moment.

I've been accused of darkness by my inner light.

I don't know much about death and the sorriest lesson I've learned is that words, my most trusted guardians against chaos, offer small comfort in the face of anyone's dying.

What keeps me level is the refusal to let the best of human aspirations die in the face of the challenges. I make a moral decision to be hopeful.

We're nature. Our minds are nature. Our desire to make poetry is nature.

As writers, the world is not about individual expression entirely because we are producing works of literature and getting them out into the world.

Writers want recognition, audience, some corroboration that all those hours at the desk and in daydreams add up to something in the esteem of others.

Don't try to teach a whole course in one lesson.

If you hug to yourself any resentment against anybody else, you destroy the bridge by which God would come to you.

I've never asked for special treatment along the way. And I'm never going to hide the fact that I'm a girl, ever. That's obvious, isn't it?

All great poetry is dipped in the dyes of the heart.

Everyone thinks I'm a hypochondriac. It makes me sick.

I promote my own self-hatred.

The SSRC committee turned attention from team research for building a model of the United States to doing one for world trade in order to investigate the international transmission mechanism.

The heart says what only the heart knows.

Focus groups are a waste of time, filled with people telling you what you want to hear so they can go home.

The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow We are such stuff as dreams are made of.