When I began to be published, people got the idea that I should 'teach writing,' which I have no idea how to do and don't really believe in.

To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.

[Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop.

You doubt God? Well more to the point I credit God with the good sense to doubt me. What is mortality after all but divine doubt flashing over us? For an instant God suspends assent and poof! we disappear.

Homer must have felt this pressure to come up with an epic poem that would sound totally new to an audience that had loved his previous best-seller.

A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.

No one will ever make necessity not happen.