The poems ... are moments when I had the intensity to see, and the energy to build, some careful analog that completed the seeing. ... All I have been left is the exhausting habit of trying to tack up the slack in my life with words.

I took my writing seriously, and it seemed to pay off.

Discourse says, 'You are.' Rhetoric preserves the freedom to say, 'I am not.

'You spin in the sky, the world spins under you, and you step from land to land, while we . . .' She turned her head right, left, and her black hair curled and uncurled on the shoulder of her coat. 'We have our dull, circled lives, bound in gravity, worshiping you!'

Linguistics is very much a science. It's a human science, one of the human sciences. And it's one of the more interesting human sciences.

How we treat our invalids - our mad, our physically or mentally compromised family members - does tell you something about who we are politically, historically, culturally.

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind - -vividly, forcefully.