One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language.

Teachers at all levels encourage the idea that you have to talk about things in order to understand them, because they wouldn't have jobs, otherwise. But it's phony, you know.

There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am.

It is fatal to one's artistic life to talk about something that is in process.

The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has a kenetic force, it sets in motion...elements in the reader that would otherwise remain stagnant.

Affliction is more apt to suffocate the imagination than to stimulate it.

Nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living at peace would have.