We must shine with hope, stained glass windows that shape light into icons, glow like lanterns borne before a procession. Who can bear hope back into the world but us.

Troubles cured you salty as a country ham, smoky to the taste, thick-skinned and tender inside.

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have.

Everything you study, everything you learn, makes you a better writer, because you have more understanding of how things work.

With my poems, I finally won even my mother. The longest wooing of my life.

If sex is a war, I am a conscientious objector: I will not play.

I am a driven writer. I feel guilty if I don't write, not self-indulgent if I do.