I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.

The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition.

The phenomenon of university creative writing programs doesn't exist in France. The whole idea is regarded as a novelty, or an oddity.

With, or despite our scars, we stay alive.

Poetry seems to have been eliminated as a literary genre, and installed instead, as a kind of spiritual aerobic exercise - nobody need read it, but anybody can do it.

There is a way in which all writing is connected. In a second language, for example, a workshop can liberate the students' use of the vocabulary they're acquiring.

The woman poet must be either a sexless, reclusive eccentric, with nothing to say specifically to women, or a brilliant, tragic, tortured suicide.

I worked at all kinds of jobs, mostly commercial editing.

There is something very satisfactory about being in the middle of something.

We sometimes received - and I would read - 200 manuscripts a week. Some of them were wonderful, some were terrible; most were mediocre. It was like the gifts of the good and bad fairies.

As a teacher you are more or less obliged to pay the same amount of attention to everything. That can wear you down.

When you see honey in the bush and there are no sign of bees, flee!! for its all but a trap

With relentless pursuit of success comes greatness.

Don’t close your eyes to the Universe and then complain: ‘It’s dark.

I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.

That is the wearisome part of business - there is no peace, no sense of certain, permanent achievement, no stability. The unexpected, and usually the awful, is forever happening.

I'm still basically an idealist, which translates into getting real things done to make people's lives better.

Seskin has the gift of song...his voice has a natural lilt that can’t be learned. The combination of musicianship and repertoire make for a rich and satisfying musical experience.

I've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get.

I think the notion of understanding each other is a relief. It's not a thing you get with everyone you hang out with.

Hairdressers are professional gossips; when only the hands are busy, the tongue is seldom still.