No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew….

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

An odd phrase, "by heart," he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.

There is a certain aesthetic pleasure in trying to imagine the unimaginable and failing, if you are a reader.

I was no good at being a child.

They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm. An ankle overlapping an ankle, as they sat on a beach, and not removed. One night they fell asleep, side by side... He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.