Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them.

There's a kind of ear music . . . a rhythmic synchronicity which creates a kind of heartbeat on the page.

You have a different kind of tenderness for everybody you know.

You know, right often, the body is the best thing we’ve got going for us. A body itself is a shiny object. Something!

I think Walt Whitman went to the help wanted section and found a squib that said "Wanted: National Poet." And he was innocent enough to believe there really was such a job. And if he could just write a poem that incorporated everything he felt and suspected and hoped for from America that he would have the position.

Writing is a kind of free fall that you then go back and edit and shape.

Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape.