There is a comfort in knowing that you don’t have to pretend anymore, that you are going to do everything within your power to heal.

I live in Santa Cruz. I moved here in 1974 and couldn't leave.

I wanted to be a writer since I was in high school, but I never thought it was possible.

Allow yourself to release the emotions you have struggled all your life to contain.

Your wallet will be stolen, you'll get fat, slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel and crack your hip.

So much inspires me. People living their lives with courage, beauty of all kinds, nature in all its aspects, people I love and people I hardly know, and, of course, other poets.

Poetry is the most intimate of all writing. I want to speak first from me to myself and then from me to you.