Contradictory strands create an essay that's richly ambivalent.

I'm fortunate in being able to find great satisfaction in my work.

My other work, teaching, also is satisfying because I can be with people but in controlled circumstances, which aren't as likely to yield the pain of dealing with family.

In the best nonfiction, it seems to me, you're always made aware that you are being engaged with a supple mind at work. The story line or plot in nonfiction consists of the twists and turns of a thought process working itself out.

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.

The knowledge that my discriminations are skewed and not always universally desirable doesn't stop me in the least from making them.