Philosophy is a bad master for poetry; religion worse; and politics self-serving will never serve the Muse.

I was walking every morning, and I'd take my iPod and paper and pen. As I walked, I wrote a poem, and then I'd come home - and sometimes it's legible, sometimes not - I typed the poem up. So I have a new, yet to be published, collection of poems now. It's called Walker's Alphabet, and among other things, it is about walking. My most recent collection of poems in 2010, incidentally, was titled WALKING backwards.

One should be able to teach adequately and feel good about it.

I really felt neurotic - it was a neurotic reason - but I had to teach very, very well. That sucked up a lot of oxygen from my time and my creative thinking.

I always wanted to be pretty as a girl, although I believed it was not possible.

The crows live in the world like you do. They are part of nature.

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