poems are small moments of enlightenment

Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that's why we decide we're done. It's getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.

The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners.

Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.

I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.

Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning. We should not be ashamed of this. It is good. It's like drinking water.

A responsibility of literature is to make people awake, present, alive. If the writer wanders, then the reader, too, will wander.