Sometimes, in my published complaints about not being a writer, I have recalled the prospect - the yearning to be a writer - as it first formed for me.

I don't really get into the power sufficiently, and that's also a problem for me.

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

At a certain point, the struggles with teaching and mothering and so on and so forth, those decline, those lessen.

Poetry must speak of others, in order to speak for the poet's imagination, in order to speak of itself; it is slowed down by poetics after its flight is over.

I came to realize this weird projection: you are much more passionate about hating something outside of you when you know that something is also in you.

When you're a female poet, would you, therefore, invoke a male muse? When nuns get consecrated into their vocations, they become brides of Christ. Christ is the bridegroom. In these symbolic actions, rather than in physical actions, where a male reaches sexuality or participates in intimate exchanges, if one uses a different term - there's often a heterosexual figuring that takes place. The male poet invokes a beautiful female muse. The virginal nun consecrated invokes the male bridegroom, Christ.