I feel more helpless with you than without you.

What I search for continuously in my art is adequate language, language I hope can stand beyond any particular occasion. What I'm finding is that in our increasingly dysfunctional U.S. society, marvelous poetry is being written - out of and amid the dysfunction.

One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else, what it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves.

It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!'

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

When one woman tells her truth, it makes a space for other women to tell their truths.

I believe that words can help us move or keep us paralyzed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something - a great deal - to do with how we live our lives.