Transcendence or detachment, leaving the body, pure love, lack of jealousy-that's the vision we are given in our culture, generally, when we think of the highest thing. . . . Another way to look at it is that the aim of the person is not to be detached, but to be more attached-to be attached to working; to be attached to making chairs or something that helps everyone; to be attached to beauty; to be attached to music.

Those of us who make up poems have agreed not to say what the pain is.

It's good to have poems that begin with tea and end with God.

Tragedies are about the depths that call up to certain men and insist that they descend.

I am proud only of those days that pass in undivided tenderness.

I use the phrase 'sibling society' to suggest a culture fundamentally without fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, or ancestors. The thinking is horizontal.

Sociological prose is generally written without images in an exact form for an academic audience.