I love and care about literature, and great writers are our teachers. You're studying their mind when you read their work.

In writing practice, there's no direction. You enter your own mind and follow it where it takes you. We have a great need to connect with our own mind and our own true self. And all of us have a story to tell.

A writer must say yes to life.

Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels.

So writing is not just writing. It is also having a relationship with other writers. And don't be jealous, especially secretly. That's the worst kind. If someone writes something great, it's just more clarity in the world for all of us.

I write because I am alone and move through the world alone. No one will know what has passed through me... I write because there are stories that people have forgotten to tell, because I am a woman trying to stand up in my life... I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay; how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only real home I'll ever have.

If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.