“Poetry is an intimate act. It's about bringing forth something that's inside you--whether it is a memory, a philosophical idea, a deep love for another person or for the world, or an apprehension of the spiritual. It's about making something, in language, which can be transmitted to others--not as information, or polemic, but as irreducible art.”

“You are not your poetry. Your self-esteem shouldn't depend on whether you publish, or whether some editor or writer you admire thinks you're any good.”

“A poem is like a child; at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its own way in the world.”

“Writing and reading are the only ways to find your voice. It won't magically burst forth in your poems the next time you sit down to write, or the next; but little by little, as you become aware of more choices and begin to make them -- consciously and unconsciously -- your style will develop.”

“Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.”

“Maybe it's what we don't say/that saves us.”

“And I saw it didn’t matterwho had loved me or who I loved. I was alone.The black oily asphalt, the slick beautyof the Iranian attendant, the thickeningclouds—nothing was mine. And I understoodfinally, after a semester of philosophy,a thousand books of poetry, after deathand childbirth and the startled cries of menwho called out my name as they entered me,I finally believed I was alone, felt itin my actual, visceral heart, heard it echolike a thin bell.”