“I love bright words, words up and singing early;Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing;Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees;I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly,Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees, Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.”

“I was, being human, born alone;I am, being woman, hard beset;I live by squeezing from a stoneThe little nourishment I get.”

“The cicadas were singing a song.It was a one-noted, one-worded; The words sounded like "please".They were singing and singing and singing and the whole world was falling down.”

“Even now, it's still hard for him to say it. I don't blame him. It's an icky word. Why couldn't whoever was in charge of naming things call cancer 'sugar' and sugar, 'cancer'? People might not eat so much of the stuff then. And it's so much more pleasant to die of sugar.”

“By giving the love act a name, if only an innocent little word like, "it," he paved the way for other words, words that would reflect physical love as in a set of mirrors.”

“Words can fall hard like a boulder loosed from a cliff.Words can drift unnoticed like a weed seed on a breeze. Words can sing.”

“The poets are supposed to liberate the words – not chain them in phrases. Who told the poets they were supposed to think? Poets are meant to sing and to make words sing. Writers don't own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody? 'Your very own words,' indeed! And who are you?”