It's terrible to lose somebody, but it's also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and I think that's got to be so much worse.

I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.

Insomnia’s different,” I said. It was hard to explain this to people. “You know the light that comes on when you open the refrigerator door? Just imagine it stays on all the time, even after you close the door. That’s what it’s like in my head. The light stays on.

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.

I never think that anything I'm writing is bluntly political in any way. I'm not going for commentary.

April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot wrote, by which I think he meant (among other things) that springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can't keep, all passion is really a setup, and we're doomed to get our hearts broken yet again. I agree, and would further add: Who cares? Every spring I go out there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally. ... Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts.

I personally am inclined to approach [housework] the way governments treat dissent: ignore it until it revolts.