“Gradually I became aware that professing English because I loved poems was like practicing vivisection because I loved dogs.”

“I always get a little bit irritated when people talk about 'bringing poetry to the people' especially those poet - performers who seem to assume their audience hasn't read anything, as though 'the people' were some ignorant mass incapable of taste. 'Bringing poetry to the people'? Speaking as a people, I go out and get it as long as its available. When people hear any kind of excellence or panache in the use of language in pop songs or movies they notice it, they talk about it. That's because it's available - inescapable, in fact - while my local library is shutting down.”

“I thought I was being loved because I was being altered.”

“We plunge into love with a naivete that ignores all prior humiliations. Thank goodness, I guess. Because we never learn, we reach for love again and again.”

“Love and pain are not the same. But sometimes it feels like they should be. Love is put to test everyday. Pain is not. Yet the two of them are inseparable because true love cannot bear separation.”

“I’d let the dummy comment slide, partly because I felt like a dummy and partly because I couldn’t think of an eloquent way to say asshole.”

“I don't like to write. But I love having written. ”