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

I've been an inveterate reader of literary magazines since I was a teenager. There are always discoveries. You're sitting in your easy chair, reading; you realize you've read a story or a group of poems four times, and you know, Yes, I want to go farther with this writer.

As a teacher you are more or less obliged to pay the same amount of attention to everything. That can wear you down.

The phenomenon of university creative writing programs doesn't exist in France. The whole idea is regarded as a novelty, or an oddity.

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

You happened to me. You were as deep down as I’ve ever been. You were inside me like my pulse.

Given the devaluation of literature and of the study of foreign languages per se in the United States, as well as the preponderance of theory over text in graduate literature studies, creative writing programs keep literature courses populated.