Just because suddenly you have a sabbatical doesn't mean that the writing occasion comes to you.

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.

Free yourself from fruitlessly worrying about things you can’t control and put your energy towards the things you can. Seize the day and take effective action on things you can change.

The Jews detests the spirit of the nation in the midst of which they live.

The art of revolutionizing and overturning states is to undermine established customs, by going back to their origin, in order to mark their want of justice.

No man suffers injustice without learning, vaguely but surely, what justice is.

'Powell movement.' What do you think 'PM' stands for?

My good friends call me Bobby.

I had always held everything in before.

Never throw caution to the wind. It could whip back into your eyes and blind you.

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but her's curiosity could have massacred a pride of lions.

My father was a boxer, though. So, I have a particular interest in Ray Mancini, I think.