That's how it is sometimes--God comes to your window, all bright light and black wings, and you're just too tired to open it.

I try to avoid calling myself a poet because I think that's something someone else has to call you. It's like bragging.

I share my life experiences as a poet with my students. My poetic difficulties, joys, struggles and discoveries. If I read a new poem or essay or book I'm excited about, I bring it in.

We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it.

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.

You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake.

If you want to be a writer in the world you really have to sit down and say, 'Why do I want to do this and why was I drawn to it to begin with?' And keep reminding yourself to return to that original impulse.