A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.

If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine - why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity?

each new poem is partly propelled by the formal energies of all the poems that have preceded it in the history of literature.

Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius.

Public education was not founded to give society what it wants. Quite the opposite.

I feel often very close to the ecstasy and anguish which lie at the very heart of poetry - I am writing a lot.

For of course one is never safe when in love. Growth is demanding and may seem dangerous, for there is loss as well as gain in growth. But why go on living if one has ceased to grow? And what more demanding atmosphere for growth than love in any form, than any relationship which can call out and requires of us our most secret and deepest selves?