The Peruvian flute music is . . . cool. In this music, they have not yet invented the industrial revolution that leads to excessive punctuality or the failed experiment they call the nuclear family. This is the music of elements, untarnished, unrehearsed.

Just being in a room with myself is almost more stimulation than I can bear.

To be one woman, truly, wholly, is to be all women. Tend one garden and you will birth worlds.

Whenever I get lost in a novel I just throw a poem in. What it does is flare up, and it's so illuminated that I'm able to see where to go. I write between these illuminations.

Like I'm dragging bundles of old clothes? I'm carrying artifacts that breathe fire. I'm talking about a language of smoke. These are three-dimensional creatures that can mate. I'd no more leave them go by the side of the trail than I would my child. I'll carry them until someone amputates my arms.

I have a great ability to improvise verbally and I am very funny on a dime.

I write a lot by sound. One sound leads me to another. These sounds aren't random; they have their own logic.