Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our day.

A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.

Even in the tragedies, [William] Shakespeare always put in parts for the comic actors because his audience was mixed. He puts in people who talk like aristocrats. He puts in idiots and fools.

Your hand is a warm stone I hold between two words.

When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.