Death's in the good-bye.

Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone.

Letters are false really - they are expressions of the way you wish you were instead of the way you are.

Now I am just an elderly lady who is full of spleen, who humps around greater Boston in a God-awful hat, who never lived and yet outlived her time, hating men and dogs and Democrats.

Today God gives milk / and I have the pail.

Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It’s as though I could fly.

Fee-fi-fo-fum - Now I'm borrowed. Now I'm numb.