I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.

for me the novel is a social vehicle, it reflects society.

The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.

The goals of the feminist movement have not been achieved, and those who claim we're living in a post-feminist era are either sadly mistaken or tired of thinking about the whole subject.

I did not know that 'poetess' was an insult, and that I myself would some day be called one. I did not know that to be told I had transcended my gender would be considered a compliment. I didn't know — yet — that black was compulsory. All of that was in the future. When I was sixteen, it was simple. Poetry existed; therefore it could be written; and nobody had told me — yet — the many, many reasons why it could not be written by me.

The truth, it seems, is not just what you find when you open a door: it is itself a door, which the poet is always on the verge of going through.

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.