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.

I remember everything but forgive anyway.

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

I think I've become more cynical about sex. Meaning, I don't think sex in and of itself leads to an epiphany.

I tried to keep myself away from him by using con words like "fidelity" and "adultery", by telling myself that he would interfere with my work, that I had him I'd be too happy to write. I tried to tell myself I was hurting Bennett, hurting myself, making a spectacle of myself. I was. But nothing helped. I was possessed. The minute he walked into a room and smiled at me, I was a goner.

Sex has the unparalleled power to make us absurd to ourselves. It also has the power to make us understand transcendence.

Poetry is the inner life of a culture, its nervous system, its deepest way of imagining the world. A culture that ignores its poets, chokes off its nervous system and becomes mortally ill.