In addition to writing in received forms, I have also had fun making up forms - Möbius strips and visual poems, particularly.

My advice to my younger self would have been, "Chill. Concentrate on the poems. Everything else will work itself out."

I don't know if there are topics that I unconsciously avoid, but as soon as they pop up in my writing, I try to take on those topics, whether or not I publish the poems.

Unlike Woody Allen, I would be happy to be part of any (poetry) club that would have me.

Over the years, I became more and more interested in the forms and techniques in which things could be said.

After my marriage ended, I had an urge to skip that part of my life completely in terms of poetry, not publish anything at all about it.

Writing is performative - and while, yes, the words in essence will be there "forever," poems are often about ecstatic moments rather than trying to pin down a particular truth of an event.

I love going to movie theaters, even in the era of movies on-demand and Netflix. When you are in a movie theater, no one can reach you by phone or other means.

If you are my friend and say to me, "Please don't write about this," I won't.

The spoken word community was significant in making me want to write accessible and urgent poems. Bob Holman, in particular, was an impressive figure.

Jean Valentine and Jane Cooper were my professors at Sarah Lawrence College - and they were uncompromised in their art. They gave me models of how to live one's life as a poet.

For all my longer works (i.e. the novels) I write chapter outlines so I can have the pleasure of departing from them later on.

Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on.

I wanted to tell her not to entertain despair like this. Despair wasn't a guest, you didn't play its favourite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy.

As far as I can tell, a young-adult novel is a regular novel that people actually read.

The true snob never rests there is always a higher goal to attain and there are by the same token always more and more people to look down upon.

When asked if direct sales is a pyramid scheme. My reply is a corporation has only one person at the top.

The decision to open up Bahrain to embrace all people indiscriminately was fostered in me ever since I was a child.

VAMPIRES I see things you can't see WEREWOLVES I find things that hunt you FAERIES I am your protector SHAPESHIFTERS But even I can't protect you now.

Just the act of sleeping beside someone you liked to be with. Maybe that was love.

You have to love what you do, and you have to need it like you need air. And there's nothing else that would give me the same degree of satisfaction as acting, which is why I can't walk away from it.