[Cancer] didn't make me more intense about not working more and just having fun more. It didn't do that either. 

No one, evidently, except me has found "No Alarms" poem ironical that an obsessive theme in my writing was - and has continued to be - not being able to write.

The consciousness of one's physical self had to be repressed because, socially, the female body was so visible, an ongoing provocation and incitement of specular curiosity and fascination.

The things that I dislike passionately, I have come to realize, are also part of me.

There are a couple of poems I've written with masculine muses, very often the muse to me is a female.

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

I look at my young students, and I no longer have the sense that, oh, I'm the authority and they have to meet a certain standard. It's like, oh, look at these young ones. They've got such a hard road in front of them. I don't envy them having life ahead of them.