I guess my writing has changed as my life has.

There are significant moments in everyone's day that can make literature. That's what you ought to write about.

It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.

Don’t complain, don’t explain.

What do any of us really know about love?

In the beginning, when I was trying to write, I couldnt turn off the outside world to the extent that I can now.

Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never came.