I knew a book of mine was finished when I was in intensive care.

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.

As a citizen of the post-historical variety, I am in continual mourning and prepared for worse.

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

All my friends are artists, so I am used to collective agony as a mode.

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

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.