Sometimes it gets talked about as if life is all about the individual, and I don't think it is. I'm really interested in what writing can contribute to a kind of cultural intelligence.

I'm interested in thinking about how are we contributing to the culture, what we can write that might help us deepen the culture, make us more reflective, make us more empathetic, make us feel our connectedness in other ways.

I am a result of what has happened on this planet - how could I find the art to say that? I can't, and yet, I am drawn to it because of the enormity of it. That seems really important.

For the poets, my hope is that they will, quite simply, feel the obligation to be really informed about the situation in which we find ourselves, in terms of our imperiled planet. You should inform yourself so deeply that it becomes part of your nature, part of your voice.

As writers, the world is not about individual expression entirely because we are producing works of literature and getting them out into the world.

I'm trying to learn something about making a balance between the inner life and the outer life. I wouldn't write if I didn't need to be making those discoveries, if I didn't feel the perpetual ignorance of being a human being.

I don't know much about death and the sorriest lesson I've learned is that words, my most trusted guardians against chaos, offer small comfort in the face of anyone's dying.