I don't know what started me, I just wrote poetry from the time was quite small. I guess I liked nursery rhymes and I guess I thought I could do the same thing. I wrote my first poem, my first published poem, when I was eight-and-a-half years old. It came out in The Boston Traveller and from then on, I suppose, I've been a bit of a professional.

I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.

There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction--every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and excitement at about a million miles an hour.

Every day is precious and I feel infinitely sad at this time melting away from me.

I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it.

Not being perfect hurts.

I think if I had done anything else I would like to have been a doctor. This is the sort of polar opposition to being a writer, I suppose.