Looking at my life was very difficult. I think I learned that I haven't been as good a person as I'm inclined to think of myself as. I haven't been as good friend, haven't been as good a person, made a lot of mistakes.

Like species, couples die out or evolve.

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

I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

The best gift you can give is a hug: one size fits all and no one ever minds if you return it.

I wrote to make sense out of all the contradictions I experienced and to deal with the pain and loss I was undergoing.

Live as if you like yourself, and it may happen.