“In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.”

“The talked about their messed-up, dysfunctional families, carefully respecting boundaries, never probing too deep in any one sitting. And they always ended up laughing. Even when the subject matter was intense or macabre, Henry’s sick and twisted and often politically incorrect sense of humor was infectious…Gloria laughed more in these first weeks at Oxford then she remembered laughing almost anywhere.”

“People could push and pull at you, and poke you, and probe as deep as they could go. They could even tear you apart, bit by bit. But at the heart and root and soul of you, something would remain untouched.”

“The secret of a good memory is attention, and attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it. We rarely forget that which has made a deep impression on our minds.”

“The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he or she has taken for subject. If the poem is thin, it is likely so not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers--has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way.”

“She wondered why they didn't understand that their true selfs were good enough, and if they weren't, then the someones they weren't good enough for, were really the ones not good enough.”