Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth.

I often wonder if all the writers who are alcoholics drink a lot because they aren't writing. It is not because they are writers that they are drinking, but because they are writers who are not writing.

If you're having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down. For me, slowing down has been a tremendous source of creativity. It has allowed me to open up -- to know that there's life under the earth and that I have to let it come through me in a new way. Creativity exists in the present moment. You can't find it anywhere else.

Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.

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

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

We shouldn't forget that the universe moves with us, is at our back with everything we do.