Poetics is a science for stammering poets.

Breath and brevity are sisters; the long-winded is an enemy who muffles your heartbeat.

I don't know where to place my body. Everyone notices that about me. I'm very restless.

[My muse] she's impatient with me, because I don't do what I should do: sit down and write.

The city and nature, the built stone and the found stone, concrete and slate, poetry addresses them all democratically.

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.

I'm nomadic. Even when I'm a visiting professor here at the City University of Hong Kong, in this campus flat, I'm constantly getting up, sitting down, picking this or that up. You can't do that and be a writer. You need to be able to sit still.