You had to come back to learn how to lose yourself, to be pilot and stray-witch, Hansel and Gretel in one.

Publication is rather like pushing the boat out; then the boat/book turns into a melting ice floe and you have to conjure a second boat which again turns into a melting floe under your feet. All the stepping stones that you conjure disappear under the water behind you.

Harvard created wonderful conditions for me as a writerbut the writing was done, almost entirely, when I got home.

I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.

I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine.

Im a firm believer in learning by heart.