I'm always somehow drawn to that sense of how fragile things are and how a garden means so differently depending upon whose language you happen to be in or whose century you happen to be in.

Looking out a window from different vantage points changes what you see and therefore what you write.

I want literature to open all the doors that I can't open by myself, and to allow me to see things that I wouldn't otherwise see.

Shakespeare, of course, makes us ever aware of transience, not only in the sonnets, but also powerfully in his plays - spectacles for a brief period of time and then gone, as when Prospero describes the pageant fading, leaving "not a rack behind."

For me, failure has to be acknowledged, needs to be faced in some way.

Often poets fall into groups that exclude others, and don't pay attention to those who write in different ways. It seems so limited to me.

Even your own memory changes over time because of circumstances or even because your body changes.