I do write fiction, and I find it more difficult, but also more liberating. On the one hand, you can make up the story, but you have to make up the story.

I do believe that great love brings with it the terror and possibility of great loss.

I write one poem a year, usually in January or February.

Nonfiction ties your hands a bit, and just like writing poetry in rhyme, it can force you to make more brutal decisions in terms of word choice, plot, etc.

People romanticize, I think, this notion of life. But life at all costs is not life, it's ego-extension.

I don't believe in God, but I do believe in that chaotic reality, and also this: that none of us knows anything about anything. Period.

I have been, earlier in my life, a lazy writer. I'd spend three hours at the gym to avoid writing, or I'd just find other distractions - reading, doing laundry, talking on the phone, etc. But suddenly I was like a laser beam: I was relentlessly focused, sometimes to the detriment of other things.