I'm much more comfortable in pants and shirts, running around. There was a typical construction about womanhood when I was growing up that I rejected.

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.

Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.

It is better to be than belong.

Words, ' he said, 'is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life.

Remember when friends was friends, and LL had a Benz? And cell phones and beepers was the new trends? When Koch was the Mayor and Reagan was the Pres?

Brave deeds are wasted when hidden.

I'm certainly never going to say that someone is prettier than Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but someone who would make her crazy for being young and good-looking.

It's always seemed to me that photography tends to deal with facts whereas film tends to deal with fiction.

They go forth [into the world] with well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds and undeveloped hearts. An undeveloped heart - not a cold one. The difference is important.

I suppose I shouldn't go around admitting I speak untruths on the radio.

Anytime you part with money, bless it and say - 'There's always more where that came from.'