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

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.

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.

I'm not giving up my history and what I've done in my music because I love it and I'm very proud of it. I just want to open it up for more people.

If you're 1 of the 3 girls in pics with a greaseball whose arms are around you at a club you lose at life. If you're the greaseball you win.

Violets smell like burnt sugar cubes that have been dipped in lemon and velvet.

I don't got that kind of money man, commercials only pay so much (inaudible).

Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree

The first money I have been offered was as District Officer Ba.

True art takes note not merely of form but also of what lies behind.

I love going to movies.

Catch fire today! Make today the day you stop complaining and do something!

Nobody can be all smiley all the time, but having a good positive attitude isn't something to shrug off.