... what is great poetry, after all, but the continuation of the human voice after death?

They keep saying the right person will come along. I think mine got hit by a truck.

Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.

I'm interested in what happens to people when they get into that publicity machine. We tend to think things have changed, but there's still a deep sexism underlying the way women are treated publicly.

There is this tendency to think that if you could only find the magic way, then you could become a poet. "Tell me how to become a poet. Tell me what to do." . . . What makes you a poet is a gift for language, an ability to see into the heart of things, and an ability to deal with important unconscious material. When all these things come together, you're a poet. But there isn't one little gimmick that makes you a poet. There isn't any formula for it.

Women really must have equal pay for equal work, equality in work at home, and reproductive choices. Men must press for these things also. They must cease to see them as "women's issues" and learn that they are everyone's issues - essential to survival on planet Earth.

Poems, like dreams, are a sort of royal road to the unconscious. They tell you what your secret self cannot express.