One man's insanity is another man's genius; someday the world will recognize the genius in my insanity.

Our house is made of glass... and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves.

The domestic lives we live - which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making - help to make possible our writing lives; our imaginations are freed, or stimulated, by the very prospect of companionship, quiet, a predictable and consoling routine.

One of the qualities of writing that is not much stressed is its problem-solving aspect, having to do with the presentation of material: how to structure it, what sort of sentences (direct, elliptical, simple or compound, syntactically elaborate), what tone (in art, "tone" is everything), pacing. Paragraphing is a way of dramatization, as the look of a poem on a page is dramatic; where to break lines, where to end sentences.

What is a family, after all, except memories? Haphazard and precious as the contents of a catch-all drawer in the kitchen.

Writing! The activity for which the only adequate bribe is the possibility of suicide, one day.

"Politics" per se is absent from my writing but there is usually a moral (if ironic) compass.