The more that accrues, the more depth, weight, and breadth we can bring to the poems, which we then need to throw overboard so we don't sink.

The reason I started writing was because I was a little kid in San Diego who was getting beaten up by her dad and sexually abused and because I felt different than everybody else and I had this big huge secret that was tearing me apart.

When you have worked with people all day who have so little and struggle to make it stretch, who live outside the rarefied, you are humbled.

I would say my life experiences are my poetry, whether I'm writing about those actual, factual experiences or not.

There is so much about the process of writing that is mysterious to me, but this one thing I've found to be true: writing begets writing.

Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won’t.

Joseph [Millar] is much more disciplined than I am. He's up every morning meditating, then he writes, and he reads throughout the day. He probably reads ten books to my two and writes twice as much as I do.