I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years.

As a memoirist, I strive for veracity.

Sure the world breeds monsters, but kindness grows just as wild.

Poetry is for me Eucharistic. You take someone else's suffering into your body, their passion comes into your body, and in doing that you commune, you take communion, you make a community with others.

I believe in God, but even if you don't, you can believe in a self, the person who is innately who you are. Once you fully become that person, then everything you do will be blessed.

I think we fall in love and become adults and become citizens in a way by writing stories about ourselves.

I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years.