My brothers were my peers, but they were not the preeminent male figures in my emotional life.

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.

Each truth we find (in life) leads us a step closer to God.

It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God

I guess I so desperately want to see us put this planet right. It's so horrifying to me that a fifth of us are starving every night, and that forty thousand children die every single day.

Many Texas barbecue fanatics have a strong belief in the beneficial properties of accumulated grease.

And, hungry for the old, familiar ways, I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.

It's wonderful what we can do if we're always doing.

A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.

A person cannot grow up through happiness. Happiness makes a person shallow. It is only through suffering that we grow up, transform, and come to a better understanding of life.

One of the oddities about being Judy Garland's daughter was that everyone treated my mother with such awe that they would never have asked me the normal questions kids get about their moms.

Language transcends us and yet we speak.