Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we did it before, Each time is a new journey with no maps.

One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.

I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.

And we can't avoid an inch of our own experience; if we do it causes a blur, a bleep, a puffy unreality. Our job is to wake up to everything, because if we slow down enough, we see that we are everything.

Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath.

I am free to write the worst junk in the world.

So even though I couldn't bear writing about cancer, I faced it every day.