It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment — the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims towards it, it backs away.

At the end of my suffering/there was a door.

To raise the veil. To see what you're saying goodbye to.

The advantage of poetry over life is that poetry, if it is sharp enough, may last.

The master said you must write what you see / But what I see does not move me / The master answered Change what you see.

From the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved.

As I saw it, all my mother's life, my father held her down, like lead strapped to her ankles. She was buoyant by nature; she wanted to travel, go to the theater, go to museums. What he wanted was to lie on the couch with the Times over his face, so that death, when it came, wouldn't seem a significant change.