Although I know it's unfair, I reveal myself one mask at a time.

Now and again I feel the astonishment of being alive like this, in this body.

The world is always somewhat vicious. I take that as a given, but at various times in various circumstances that fact will be no more than a shadow or an echo behind some poem. Other times it will be more manifest. I try to write myself into articulations of half-felt, half-known feelings, without program. I'm always working toward getting my world and, hopefully, the world outside of me into a version that makes sense of it. Viciousness requires the same precision as love does.

A true inner world is often revealed by style and sensibility as much as by what appears to be confession.

I’ve had it with all stingy-hearted sons of bitches. A heart is to be spent.

I think because my parents died in their early 50s, mid 50s, I always thought I would die young. And that's been both a useful thing and I suspect something that's haunted me a little bit.

I’ll always deny that I kissed her. I was just whispering into her mouth.