A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.

I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.

The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.

A student brings something to discuss, saying, "I don't know whether this is really good, or whether I should throw it in the wastebasket." The assumption is that one or the other choice is the right move. No. Almost everything we say or think or do - or write - comes in that spacious human area bounded by something this side of the sublime and something above the unforgivable.

Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.

Language can do what it can’t say.

I don't see writing as a communication of something already discovered, as "truths" already known. Rather, I see writing as a job of experiment. It's like any discovery job; you don't know what's going to happen until you try it.