“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”

“Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love.”

“I had meant my promise to George. I had said that I was, before anything else, a Boleyn and a Howard through and through; but now, sitting in th shadowy room, looking out over the gray slates of the city, and up at the dark clouds leaning on the roof of Westminster Palace, I suddenly realized that George was wrong, and that my family was wrong, and that I had been wrong-- for all my life. I was not a Howard before anything else. Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love, I didn't want the rewards for which Anne had surrendered her youth. I didn' want the arid glamour of George's life, I wanted the heat and the sweat and the passion of a man that I could love and trust. And I wanted to give myself to him: not for advantage, but for desire.”

“Who else but a lover retains the ability to wound the other person with such passion, such precision? And who else but that lover has the capacity to heal what he or she has done?”

“A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.”

“I am a person before I am anything else. I never say I am a writer. I never say I am an artist...I am a person who does those things.”