we all carry the Houses of our Youth inside, and our Parents, too, grown small enough to fit within our Hearts.

I knew I was in England by the smell.

You must have a certain amount of maturity to be a poet. Seldom do sixteen-year-olds know themselves well enough.

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not exhortation. Freedom is a loose leash, license to be different from your mother and still be loved...Freedom is...not insisting that your daughter share your limitations. Freedom also means letting your daughter reject you when she needs to and come back when she needs to. Freedom is unconditional love.

If we don't risk anything, we risk even more.

biography is essentially a collaborative art, the latest biographer collaborating with all those who wrote earlier.