I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka.

It wasn't so easy though, ending the war. A war is a huge fire; the ashes from it drift far, and settle slowly.

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.

It's clear, it's fresh, like a mint candy.

Walking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will discover behind them something that will truly be worth seeing, she feels as if her feet are not on cement at all but on ice. The blade of the skate floats, she knows, on a thin film of water, which it melts by pressure and which freezes behind it. This is the freedom of the present tense, this sliding edge.

How shrunk, how dwindled, in our times Creation's mighty seed - For Man has broke the Fellowship With murder, lust, and greed.

Every novel is-at the beginning-the same opening of a door onto a completely unknown space.