I turned to human suffering because - this may sound odd - animal suffering is more difficult for me to deal with.

One of the things I'm constantly telling my students is that they're never going to write a poem everyone gets, or if they do, they've failed. They should leave someone behind every time.

Human suffering is articulated in language; communication is how we seek help, consolation, etc.

I figure I write for people who are intelligent enough to do some labor. Lazy readers are not my ideal readers.

Revision is a good impulse to have.

I like to move around in the landscape between poetry and prose, between the lyrical and the narrative.

I never try to force poems into a collection simply because they were written/published within a certain period of time. They will eventually find their perfect home.

I enjoy working on a number of projects - books - at once.

I tend to overuse the word "project" only because "book" is terrifying while I'm still in the middle of something. A project can fail. I don't want a book to fail.

I always revise when I publish in a book. So versions in magazines are sometimes slightly different.

I pay editors. I never ask friends or colleagues to work for free.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.

You say we'll soar like two birds through the clouds, but soon you'll cage me on your shelf. I'll never learn to be just me, first by myself.

Making films is too big an undertaking to be doing it on a whim, so you're waiting all the time, until you finally meet the person who gets it.

What is more natural in a democratic age than that we should begin to measure the stature of a work of art-especially of a painting-by how widely and how well it is reproduced?

Even the most piddling life is of momentous consequence to its owner.

Some people grow into their dreams, instead of out of them.

Every human being has, like Socrates, an attendant spirit; and wise are they who obey its signals. If it does not always tell us what to do, it always cautions us what not to do.

I was really awful at auditions. There's something about sitting down and saying into the camera: "I'm Nina and this is the name of my agent." That makes me just die inside.

Directors are not worried about casting beautiful women, but they are not sure that they want to cast great-looking men. My looks have prevented people from seeing my work objectively.