It is a terrible thing to be so open: it is as if my heart put on a face and walked into the world.

As a poet, one lives a bit on air. I always like someone who can teach me something practical.

There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart - It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge, For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.

It was my last act of love (first words to her mother in the hospital after her first major suicide attempt)

because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.

And I identify too closely with my reading, with my writing.

The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.