I don't see what women see in other women," I'd told Doctor Nolan in my interview that noon. "What does a woman see in a woman that she can't see in a man?" Doctor Nolan paused. Then she said, "Tenderness.

As a poet I would say everything should be able to come into a poem but I can't put toothbrushes in a poem. I really can't.

Apparently, the most difficult feat for a Cambridge male is to accept a woman not merely as feeling, not merely as thinking, but as managing a complex, vital interweaving of both.

I want to be important. By being different. And these girls are all the same.

Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were a part of me. They were my landscape.

You are the one. Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn.

... you looked around and saw everybody either married or busy and happy and thinking and being creative, and you felt scared, sick, lethargic, worst of all, not wanting to cope. You saw visions of yourself in a straightjacket, and a drain on the family, murdering your mother in actuality, killing the edifice of love and respect built up over the years in the hearts of other people.