Why am I attracted to all these lying quotes all of a sudden? Here’s another one. This one by Phillip Lopate: ‘(Children know it better than adults) that in telling a lie, fidelity is everything.’

Until people see poetry as springing from all of life, they will isolate it in a creativity corner and treat it like a mascot.

I imagined a psychic pain growing inside him (myself) that demanded some physical outlet. Suicide must have been his attempt to give Pain a body, a representation, to put it outside himself. A need to convert inner torment into some outward tangible wound that all could see. It was almost as though suicide were a last-ditch effort at exorcism, in which the person sacrificed his life in order that the devil inside might die.

It bothers me when I can't, for example, remember a name. I don't know if it's pre-senility or whether there are too many names packed in our brains.

I like the freedom that comes with lowered expectations.

A personal essay often includes some or a lot of personal confession. That makes the reader feel less lonely in their confusion and darkness.

In new work, we need to see the shadow, however faint, of previous literary effort.