No one sleeps in this room without the dream of a common language.

I think many poets, including myself, write both for the voice and for the page. I certainly write for the person alone in the library, who pulls down a book and it opens to a poem. I am also very conscious of what it means to read these poems aloud.

Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler - for the liar - than it really is, or ought to be.

Women have always been seen as waiting: waited to be asked, waiting for our menses, in fear lest they do or do not come, waiting for men to come home from wars, or from work, waiting for children to grow up, or for the birth of a new child, or for menopause.

If we had time and no money, living by our wits, what story would you tell?

In America we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You are in danger.

Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.