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

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.

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.

As a teacher you are more or less obliged to pay the same amount of attention to everything. That can wear you down.

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

I understand the directors much more. I was always rebelling against them when I was a youngster, I didn't want to be told what to do. I had no identification.

A sense of humor is the best indicator that you will recover; it is often the best indicator that people will love you. Sustain that and you have hope.

Everyone likes to talk shop, which is the most interesting talk in the world, in the beginning.

my pleasure was in the strength of my back, in my noble shoulders, the cool smooth flesh cylinders of my arms.

Spend as much time as possible, with body and with spirit in God's out-of-doors.

I know where beauty lives, I've seen it once, I know the warmth she gives.

Liberty built civilization. It can rebuild civilization.

The remedy against want is to moderate your desires.

We need to go there and make sure we bring that cup home. and if we do succeed, then we'll dedicate it to the fans that have waited so patiently since 1984. (on the Champions League)