In various memoir pieces, I have traced the trajectory of yearning through decisions made, good and bad, that had somehow kept the ambition on track.

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

I guess my writing through time has focused on a number of dimensions that reflect separately on the meaning and social place of the female body.

I want, I want, I want! We never grow out of it somehow. Unless we become Buddhists, maybe.

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.

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

"I want to be always happy," Maxine Hong Kingston announces . But, as this interview makes clear, for me, it was the desire to write poetry that kept me discontented, if not depressed and unhappy, through what many casual biographers have characterized as successful and productive decades.