Connubial Because with alarming accuracy she’d been identifying patterns I was unaware of—this tic, that tendency, like the way I've mastered the language of intimacy in order to conceal how I felt— I knew I was in danger of being terribly understood.

Better to be furious at one thing, become radiant with purpose. Better to love links and rhythms than all-embracing answers.

There's a certain pleasure in violating the strictures of your education. The trick is, if you're going to explore ideas in a poem, to be suspicious of ideas and suspicious of your own mind at the same time. It's often a matter of orchestration and pacing. Of shaping some kind of dialectic flow.

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

Connubial Because with alarming accuracy she’d been identifying patterns I was unaware of—this tic, that tendency, like the way I've mastered the language of intimacy in order to conceal how I felt— I knew I was in danger of being terribly understood.

There are always the simple events of your life that you might try to convert into legend.

I've tried to become someone else for a while, only to discover that he, too, was me.