It is hard to sever the cords that tie us to our slavery and leave intact those that bind us to ourselves.

We only store in memory images of value. To write about one's life is to live it twice, and the second time is both spiritual and historical.

You can’t put much on paper before you betray your secret self, try as you will to keep things civil.

poetry is the sung voice of accurate perception.

Refuse to write your life and you have no life.

The materials of true poetry are always humble, absolutely idiosyncratic, the autobiographical tatters that, in gifted hands, are made into the memoir that fits us all.

The cold was our pride, the snow was our beauty. It fell and fell, lacing day and night together in a milky haze, making everything quieter as it fell, so that winter seemed to partake of religion in a way no other season did, hushed, solemn.