Good sex is a mystery. Perhaps humping and pumping is not a mystery, but good sex is a mystery, and how human beings become truly intimate remains a mystery.

Don't ye know that ev'ry Soul on Earth feels itself to be an Orphan?

I am not quite sure how writing changes things, but I know that it does. It is indirect-like the trails of earthworms aerating the earth. It is not always deliberate-like the tails of glowing dust dragged by comets.

Motherhood cannot finally be delegated. Breast-feeding may succumb to the bottle; cuddling, fondling, and paediatric visits may also be done by fathers...but when a child needs a mother to talk to, nobody else but a mother will do.

That was probably the mistake of my generation, that we thought that having sex with anyone would be intimate and it wasn't.

I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.

It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them.