You are almost not free, if you are teaching a group of graduate students, to become friends with one of them. I don't mean anything erotically charged, just a friendship.

There is something very satisfactory about being in the middle of something.

I'm addicted to email, but other than that, there are practical things - being able to buy a book on the internet that you can't find in your local bookshop. This could be a lifeline if you live further from the sources.

I don't think it's by accident that I was first attracted to translating two French women poets.

I worked at all kinds of jobs, mostly commercial editing.

We sometimes received - and I would read - 200 manuscripts a week. Some of them were wonderful, some were terrible; most were mediocre. It was like the gifts of the good and bad fairies.

Clearly, once the student is no longer a student the possibilities of relationship are enlarged.