Poetry is a man arguing with himself; rhetoric is a man arguing with others.

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.

If you're imaginatively responsible to the place you live in, you understand the watershed.

The birds are silent in the woods. / Just wait: soon enough / You will be quiet too

Imagination runs through the places where we live like water. We need both things-a living knowledge of the land and a live imagination of it and our place in it- if we are going to preserve it.

Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free.

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

Brilna, meanwhile, had attached a vacant look to her face, one that she applies when confused, a common occurrence, thus a frequent application.

Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience.

In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets - when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta - there lived a tailor in Gloucester.

I'm just going to write because I cannot help it.

Welcome to Hollywood, a land just off the coast of planet Earth. I am never quite certain if I am visiting the zoo, or if I'm one of the animals in a cage.

You cannot be afraid to speak up and speak out for what you believe. You have to have courage, raw courage.

There's a kind of virgin one only becomes with difficulty.

I've been asked to say a couple of words about my husband, Fang. How about short and cheap?

You can't have been here long, you haven't got a pot belly.

Wow," Thalia muttered. "Apollo is hot." "He's the sun god," I said. "That's not what I meant.