A family is a mystery.

I'm not sure that the benefit - as a writer and as a citizen - that I would get from reading at least the front page of the Times every day or every other day would outweigh the depression.

it is forbidden to love where we are not loved

I wish I wrote more about the world at more distance from myself.

If I wrote in a sonnet form, I would be distorting. Or if I had some great new idea for line breaks and I used it in a poem, but it's really not right for that poem, but I wanted it, that would be distorting.

When anyone escapes, my heart / leaps up. Even when it's I who am escaped from, / I am half on the side of the leaver.

Writing or making anything-a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake-has self-respect in it. You're working. You're trying. You're not lying down on the ground, having given up.