People talking about politics usually start from the ass end backwards in that they think you have a political agenda, and then you make your work fit that cookie cutter. It's the other way around. One works by simple observation, looking into things. It's usually called insight and out of that comes your view - not that you have the view first and then squash everything to make it fit. I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.

I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

A language is everything you do.

We've learned to see the world in gasps.

I tell, therefore you are.

When I was 16 I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines. My main feedback came from my English teacher, Miss Bessie B. Billings, who said, 'I can't understand this at all, dear, so it must be good.

Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.