“I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.”

White hate crimes, white hate speech. I still try to claim I wasn’t brought up to hate. But hate isn’t the half of it. I grew up in the vast encircling presumption of whiteness.

The mind’s passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.

They can rule the world while they can persuade us our pain belongs in some order is death by famine worse than death by suicide, than a life of famine and suicide…?

An honorable human relationship … is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.’”

Our personalities seem dangerously to blur and overlap with our mother’s; and, in a desperate attempt to know where mother ends and daughter begins, we perform radical surgery.

When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.

To become a politics of asking women’s questions, demanding a world in which the integrity of all women–not a chosen few–shall be honored and validated in every respect of culture.

In America we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You are in danger.

I am always interested in the ways of scoring the sound of the poem, especially a poem with long lines.

I am uncomfortable with talking of poetry as a priestly profession, because I have little use for organized religions and priestly hierarchies. They have demoralized, persecuted, so many, including women, gays, non-believers.

The women’s movement appeared at a very crucial moment in my life. There was a whole political movement asking such questions and others I had never asked.

Every poem breaks a silence that had to be overcome.

Strangers are an endangered species.

If we had time and no money, living by our wits, what story would you tell?

Experience is always larger than language.

Because I think that we are less hampered when it comes to ‘this costs too much’ or ‘that’s impossible.’

Less than the weed that grows beside thy door.

Less time alone with parents. Less attention for hurts and disappointments. Less approval for accomplishments. . . .

This will make the transition happen with less death and destruction.

Getting paid less to work for people you like and believe in is much better for you (and your career) in the long run.

What’s less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I’ve changed the cat little because I didn’t know what my characters were going to say next.

There’s always way less improv than people think. The truth is something like 15 percent.

Its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence-is shaped far less by what we celebrate and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget.