You need to be distracted.

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.

LIFE is what YOU make it. Make sure it's AWESOME.

We are only different because there exists something to be different from, and it is this difference that bonds us.

Racism tears down your insides so that no matter what you achieve, you're not quite up to snuff.

The really simple approach to photography is a great balance to making the films.

No man can pass into eternity, for he is already in it.

They build their own Hells.

There is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust.

Every 10 seconds we lose a child to hunger. This is more than HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

I have to travel a lot, but relaxation to me is when I am at home.

My first love, I'll never forget, and it's such a big part of who I am, and in so many ways, we could never be together, but that doesn't mean that it's not forever. Because it is forever.