Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.

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

Both art and faith are dependent on imagination; both are ventures into the unknown.

What I heard was my whole self saying and singing what it knew: I can.

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.

In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.

Looking, Walking, Being, I look and look. Looking's a way of being: one becomes, sometimes, a pair of eyes walking. Walking wherever looking takes one. The eyes dig and burrow into the world. They touch, fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor. World and the past of it, not only visible present, solid and shadow that looks at one looking. And language? Rhythms of echo and interruption? That's a way of breathing. breathing to sustain looking, walking and looking, through the world, in it.