“Nothing can be done but by inches. I write out my life hour by hour, word by word . . . imagining the existence of something uncreated this poem our lives.”

“To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence-- words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.”

“Lying is done with words, and also with silence.”

“I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes...are maps...I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail”

“One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else, what it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves.”

“What kind of beast would turn its life into words?”

“We move but our words stand become responsible for more than we intendedand this is verbal privilege”