The more I live, the more I think, two people together is a miracle.

[The poet] is endowed to speak for those who do not have the gift of language, or to see for those who - for whatever reasons - are less conscious of what they are living through. It is as though the risks of the poet's existence can be put to some use beyond her own survival.

They can rule the world while they can persuade us our pain belongs in some order is death by famine worse than death by suicide, than a life of famine and suicide...?

In 1945, just at the end of World War II, the American poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote a remarkable book called The Life of Poetry. In it she says that on any particular day in the world, if poetry ceased to exist, it would immediately be reinvented on that same day.

Any woman's death diminishes me.

The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can't afford to lead a sentimental or self-deceiving life.

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.