Men know almost nothing about desire, they think it has to do with sexual activity or can be discharged that way. But sex is a substitute, like money or language. Sometimes I just want to stop seeing.

Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.

Poetry - poiesis means a thing made.

I do think I have an ability to record sensual and emotional facts and factoids, to construct a convincing surface of what life feels like, both physical life and emotional life.

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.

What makes life life and not a simple story? Jagged bits moving never still, all along the wall.

He was trying to fit this Herakles onto the one he knew.