Images are ... a kind of emotional shorthand.

Blocks usually stem from fear of being judged. If you imagine the world is listening, you'll never write a line.

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.

The older we get, the more Jewish we become in my family.

You reach a point in life where you realize that you might as well do what you need to do, because your being loved or not being loved is really a function of the people you encounter and not of yourself. That is an immensely liberating insight.

Before things are written down they don't exist in quite the same way. The act of fixing them in words gives them a kind of currency that can be traded.

You're not too fat; you're just in the wrong country.