Sometimes the taproot and the vines are far apart. Like English and the Asian poem.

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.

Please try not to need me. That’s the worst bait of all to a lonely man.

I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.

There is no greater mistake in life than seeing things or hearing them at the wrong time.

The trouble with many religions, accused of wishful thinking, is that they are not wishful enough. They show a deplorable lack of imagination.

Nightside, cities glistened in chains, and a spray of tinkertoy habitats girdled the planet. Gossamer starbridges reached from the equator towards orbit.

You can't say the secret word!

I juggle a lot of different balls and sometimes I don't know how I manage to keep them all up in the air, but I do!

Baseball should adopt replay, plain and simple. If we can see it at home or on hand-held PDAs, the technology should be used in games.

The fact of being alive compensated for what life did to one.

If you have a higher reason ... than just to make money... it will bring you longer fulfillment. And it won't feel like work.