When I write, I put aside the heterosexual world to admit a muse that is a woman-loving-woman female.

I was writing poems as I was walking. I was able to take that restlessness, that nomadic distraction, and use that distraction in the world and turn that distraction into observations and then into poems.

I was nine when I first knew I wanted to be a writer, in particular, a poet.

Quite a while ago, I made a conscious choice to place my teaching first, so it was very ego-invested. That decision wasn't a good thing in some ways.

It's as if I'm setting aside the husband and son, you know, the patriarchal world, for the world of the muse. This is the world of writing.

I have a muse who's very powerful, but I'm still a hopeless deadbeat of a poet.

According to [Maxine Hong] Kingston, the prose writer is "a workhorse."