Mediocre prose might be read as an escape, might be spoken on television by actors, or mouthed in movies. But mediocre poetry did not exist at all. If poetry wasn't good, it wasn't poetry. It was that simple.

I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers.

Why does life need evidence of life?

Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.

All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.

We don't have a clear path forward, and that's been the case for feminism since the 18th century, when the idea of the rights of women actually began.

Poems, like dreams, are a sort of royal road to the unconscious. They tell you what your secret self cannot express.