Paris is a wonderful city. I can't say I belong to an especially anglophone community.

The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition.

The phenomenon of university creative writing programs doesn't exist in France. The whole idea is regarded as a novelty, or an oddity.

I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.

With, or despite our scars, we stay alive.

Poetry seems to have been eliminated as a literary genre, and installed instead, as a kind of spiritual aerobic exercise - nobody need read it, but anybody can do it.

There is a way in which all writing is connected. In a second language, for example, a workshop can liberate the students' use of the vocabulary they're acquiring.

The woman poet must be either a sexless, reclusive eccentric, with nothing to say specifically to women, or a brilliant, tragic, tortured suicide.

I worked at all kinds of jobs, mostly commercial editing.

There is something very satisfactory about being in the middle of something.

We sometimes received - and I would read - 200 manuscripts a week. Some of them were wonderful, some were terrible; most were mediocre. It was like the gifts of the good and bad fairies.

To swear day and night by media slander will make one a bigger victim than the slandered. It doesn't take much to begin to fear a mere illusion of human badness.

Contacting and living from our True Self is the central task of personal growth.

As short as life is, your decisions and actions could still make it shorter. Always think about consequences before taking actions.

I'm an un-healable positive optimist.

Fight only in direst need Not for lust or petty greed Honor those that do give birth Respect them well for their full worth

Obvious effort is the antithesis of grace.

We do not actually know other people; we only know our judgments.

I can't very well tell my batters don't hit it to him. Wherever they hit it, he's there anyway (Mays).

Acting is what I've pursued since I was a child.

Our partnership has been built on four pillars The first pillar is peace. The second pillar is freedom. The third pillar is respect. The fourth pillar is cooperation.