There's always a part of your nation's history that you haven't been told that... has a powerful impact on how you yourself may behave and may believe.

Ah, the mysterious croak. Here today, gone tomorrow. It's the best reason I can think of to throw open the blinds and risk belief. Right now, this minute, time to move out into the grief and glory. High tide.

Fiction is a sort of inter-human magic, allowing you to travel into a scene and feel it tingle on your skin.

A miscarriage is a natural and common event. All told, probably more women have lost a child from this world than haven't. Most don't mention it, and they go on from day to day as if it hadn't happened, so people imagine a woman in this situation never really knew or loved what she had. But ask her sometime: how old would your child be now? And she'll know.

Poetry feels like a country I visit without a passport, where I look around furtively, grab hold of something precious, and try to smuggle it back across the border. Any poem I get written down feels like contraband to me.

The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.

The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.