If the Buddhist's job is to be detached, I think that the artist's job is to be both detached and attached.

I was ruined before I got started. I say ruined, but I could say blessed; I was too far gone to believe in it. And I'm shocked how generation after generation repeats the behavior.

The cave is a dark, shadowy place. It's a place that's very close and yet distant at the same time, and it's a place of revelation and isolation. Your form, your body, your writing is your confinement.

I floundered in my twenties. Though I wore a long scarf. And when I got to be thirty I got a job at Temple University in Philadelphia. I worked there for seven years, and I finally got fired, mostly for political reasons.

Men aren't called pricks, but women are called cunts.

I will look at the footprints going in and out of the water and dream up a small blue good to talk to.

I have left out what I don't remember or don't know. Temperament, fear, shyness, obedience, kindness.