Our mind is dark in some way, and so we use rhetoric as a kind of prop or foil.

I'm in California, so I know people who are natives who tell me there's lots of weather here, but it's not the same as being in Vermont. Since I grew up on the East Coast I miss that weather all the time. You'd think I'd get used to not having it, but I don't.

I think about the kinds of gardens that Queen Elizabeth put up. She made gardens in the shape of an "E," for Elizabeth, just one more way in which she used symbolism to solidify her reign: appearing as the Virgin Queen, for example, or wearing a dress embroidered with eyes and ears to indicate that she knew all that was going on in her castle; she had spies.

I can't move my body slowly. I can't move the line slowly. So I end up with way too much, often opaque to me later.

One of the reasons I like immersing myself in different texts, putting myself in the company of other writers, is that they do change your vocabulary. They change what you write about or they change the length of lines.

Our mind is dark in some way, and so we use rhetoric as a kind of prop or foil.

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