“There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice…In the end, I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist.”

Women have always been seen as waiting: waited to be asked, waiting for our menses, in fear lest they do or do not come, waiting for men to come home from wars, or from work.

When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart.

Poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don’t know you know.

What kind of beast would turn its life into words?

Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for woman more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival.

The kind of poetry that interests me is intellectual and moral and political and sexual and sensual – all of that fermenting together.

Even where love has run thin the child’s soul musters strength… the rush of purpose to make a life worth living past abandonment building the layers up again over the torn hole.

I’d call it love if love didn’t take so many years but lust too is a jewel.

What I search for continuously in my art is adequate language, language I hope can stand beyond any particular occasion.

It is not really about them though it targets them as consumers.

Reality, the oppressor’s tongue.

I am a citizen of a country that has just undergone a thieved election, a country deeply and dangerously divided between rich and poor, but also between rich and middle class.

The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people.

So endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

A life I didn’t choose chose me: even my tools are the wrong ones for what I have to do.

I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence -from “Splittings

There is no formula to relationships. They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like.

A vital part of the happiness formula is self-discipline. Whoever conquers himself knows deep happiness that fills the heart with joy.

True alchemy lies in this formula: ‘Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse’.

There is one guaranteed formula for failure, and that is to try to please everyone.

Eating out doesn’t have to be a formula. Eating out is about having fun. I get really frustrated when it’s badly done.

Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas.