Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

As women, we can't look old. We can't be fat. We're supposed to look like the 14-year-old models in Vogue, who are younger and younger and skinnier and skinnier, and they are air-brushed and contoured and Photoshopped.

Anybody who instantly goes from being a poet and a graduate student to being a public figure has to be in a state of shock. First people want to praise you, and then they want to attack you. No one can prepare you for it.

Writing about sex turns out to be just writing about life.

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

I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged...I had poems which were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.

Writers are always at the edge of the inferno, and the fire is licking at our toes. Luckily, this turns us on!