Lovers are not at their best when it matters. Mouths dry up, palms sweat, conversation flags and all the time the heart is threatening to fly from the body once and for all. Lovers have been known to have heart attacks. Lovers drink too much from nervousness and cannot perform. They eat too little and faint during their fervently wished consummation. They do not stroke the favoured cat and their face-paint comes loose. This is not all. Whatever you have set store by, your dress, your dinner, your poetry, will go wrong.

The poet will not be satisfied with recording, the poet will have to transform.

Creativity is on the side of health - it isn't the thing that drives us mad; it is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness.

I believe in communication; books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.

unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven.

As a writer, if you're prepared to work from your own wound, you're allowing people into the most vulnerable parts of yourself.

There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.