In the same way, the people whom I most abhor, I abhor them for elements that I abhor in myself.

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.

Psychological motivation is the desire to change relations between two points, and so psychology is the study of equations with two unbound variables. ("America: Three Audiences")

I'm really not a TV junkie... OK, I kind of am a TV junkie, but I'm much more of a movie junkie - my junk food is romantic comedies I've seen a million times.

I love having the photograph in my hand. I love looking at the photograph. I love looking at a box of photographs. I just love the still photograph.

I realized, "Oh my god, this is an enormous play. And it's almost all me. Big. big chunks of speeches, speeches, speeches." And I started to panic.

I don't know what the f--k I'm talking about with parenting.

The difference between a serial killer and a saint is environment. That's a very hard thing to accept because that raises a lot of questions

Climate change now represents so urgent a threat to mankind that the only way to deal with it is by suspending democracy.

I guess you heard, Hillary Clinton has a new campaign slogan: "I've fallen and I can't get up!"

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

As you begin to heal the inner you, you alter your immune system.