It has always seemed to me that if you could talk about your work in fully-formed phrases, you wouldn't write it. The writing is the statement, you see, and it seems to me that the poem or the story or the novel you write is the kind of metaphor you cast on life.

A happy childhood can't be cured. Mine'll hang around my neck like a rainbow, that's all, instead of a noose.

I always say that one's poetry is a solace to oneself and a nuisance to one's friends.

How clerks love refusing. It salves them for being clerks.

Women can't travel light. We're in charge of the basic facts.

First publication is a pure, carnal leap into that dark which one dreams is life.

This is my answer to the gap between ideas and action - I will write it out.