I'm just as unhappy about San Antonio as I was about Chicago. If you're unhappy about certain things, you're unhappy everywhere.

Packing is important because a lot of times I have to go places where I have to be in four different climates in three weeks. For example, Bosnia, Ireland, Rome. Different parts of Italy. You have to pack and get it down to a science.

I'm a witch woman--high on tobacco and holy water. I'm a woman delighted with her disasters. They give me something to do. A profession of sorts...I have the magic of words. The power to charm and kill at will.

I think that we need to measure how we give dollars to libraries by need. And the communities that are poor, in my opinion, should get more because you have to do more outreach.

If you start thinking about who's going to read it [you're writing], or what grade will you get, or is it going to win that award, or are you going to get into this graduate program, you're blocking the light, and the light is that guidance and love we get when we open up our hearts and are guided by our higher selves, or God, or the Buddha Lupe [Buddha and the Virgin of Guadalupe fused together, as they are in the tattoo on Sandra's right arm], or whatever you believe in, or love.

I have to understand what my strengths and limitations are, and work from a true place. I try to do this as best I can while still protecting my writer self, which more than ever needs privacy.

I'm from Chicago, so the Chicago working-class poets still mean a great deal to me.