Anyone can tell you that how you're raised as a child has a great deal to do with how you behave as an adult and whether you have complexes or whether you need to prove yourself or all that kind of stuff and yet the mother in a traditional family who has raised a child never makes it in the history books.

I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers.

It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing

I wish someone had told me that my stories are really mine to tell. In other words, anything that I think is important or that has moved me has the ability to move somebody else.

At the very beginning when I begin writing a poem I try not to think of the audience or anyone at all except for trying to get at the very center of what is driving that poem. In a way it's like analyzing myself.

I write short stories, and I wrote a play.

I always loved science. And in fact, I got a science award in high school. I mean, I loved science, but I think I loved literature more.