Our masks, always in peril of smearing or cracking, in need of continuous check in the mirror or silverware, keep us in thrall to ourselves, concerned with our surfaces.

You cannot meet someone for a moment, or even cast eyes on someone in the street, without changing. That is my subject.

Poets are interested mostly in death and commas.

She tended to be impatient with that sort of intellectual who, for all his brilliance, has never been able to arrive at the simple conclusion that to be reasonably happy you have to be reasonably good.

I happen to believe that there are a lot of good poets around at present, but a poet like Alex Kuo, who possesses a highly developed moral sense and a bitter honesty, is rare at any time and especially in this time. We need him.

You write for the people in high school who ignored you. We all do.

He said, "You have pigs in this poem; pigs are not poetic." I got up and walked out of that class and never went back.