“To do something very common, in my own way.”

“For now, poetry has the capacity - in its own ways and by its own means - to remind us of something we are forbidden to see.”

“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.”

“Behind all art is an element of desire...Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art — even the most angry, even the darkest, even the most grief-stricken, and even the most embittered art has that element somewhere behind it. Because how could you be so despairing, so embittered, if you had not had something you loved that you lost?”

“The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.”

“A lot is being said today about the influence that the myths and images of women have on all of us who are products of culture. I think it has been a peculiar confusion to the girl or woman who tries to write because she is peculiarly susceptible to language. She goes to poetry or fiction looking for her way of being in the world, since she too has been putting words and images together; she is looking eagerly for guides, maps, possibilities; and over and over in the ‘words’ masculine persuasive force’ of literature she comes up against something that negates everything she is about: she meets the image of Woman in books written by men.”

“Flags are blossoming now where little else is blossomingand I am bent on fathoming what it means to love my country. The history of this earth and the bones within it?Minerals, traces, rumors I am made from, morsel, minuscule fibre, one womanlike and unlike so many, fooled as to her destiny, the scope of her task?One citizen like and unlike so many, touched and untouched in passing…A patriot is not a weapon. A patriot us one who wrestles for the soul of her countryas she wrestles for her own being, for the soul of his country…”