There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship-only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses. The death has occurred much earlier.

To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary. When we take away the right to an individual name, we symbolically take away the right to be an individual. Immigration officials did this to refugees; husbands routinely do it to wives.

I believe that there's a force of life in the universe, and that when we're writing or making music or painting, we're likely to connect with that flow.

Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love.

Perhaps every generation thinks of itself as a lost generation and perhaps every generation is right.

Sex just as a drive, as a hormonal drive, is not very interesting.

Murky language means someone wants to pick your pocket.