Small, red, and upright he waited, gripping his new bookbag tight in one hand and touching a lucky penny inside his coat pocket with the other, while the first snows of winter floated down on his eyelashes and covered the branches around him and silenced all trace of the world.

Do you remember when they taught cursive in schools? I think they don't anymore. But I still enjoy it - just the physical act and all the - the whole business of making a thing out of language.

It is easier to tell a story of how people wound one another than of what binds them together.

I mean, every thought starts over, so every expression of a thought has to do the same. every accuracy has to be invented... I feel I am blundering in concepts too fine for me.

Maybe I could have been good as a drawer if I had done it as much as I did writing, but it's more scary to draw. It's more revealing. You can't disguise yourself in drawing.

One of the principle qualities of pain is that it demands an explanation.

I never had much education in English poetry as such.