Part of elegy is confrontation - not just with the idea of death, but with the person who has died.

I think that the people who really accomplish things in this world have to have a little bit of crazy in them.

I like when a poem ends on its "receipts," meaning it gives me something tactile or tangible to dwell on as I exit the reading experience. So I strive to end my own poems that way as well.

I write to be recorder, observer, participant, and sometimes, even judge. I want to engage the world as I see it with my whole self - all of those different aspects of it.

I switch between fixed forms and free verse often, and enjoy being a poet who can "swing both ways," so to speak.

Poetry is such an ancient art, and I consider myself young within that art.

I write a lot, and then forget what I've written, and then come back to it and say, "Not bad, I should do something with this!"

Only after my father's death could I speak my own individual truths about him. In a sense, I had to turn him into a character, a figure I could control through language.

I lived a life I knew I had to hide My father's edicts resolutely grim.

Editing is work, and it's hard to do while working on one's own writing.

LIFE IS NEVER OVER.

He leaned back in his seat throwing his hands behind his head

For an actor to go to work every day is an extreme blessing.

Mass ought to be in Latin, unless you could do it in Greek or Chinese. In fact, any abracadabra that no bloody member of the public or half-educated ape of a clargimint could think he understood.

Those who go to Heaven ride on a pass and enter into blessings that they never earned, but all who go to hell pay their own way.

I've played a lot of bad guys, 'cause that was the only work I could get. People saw my face and went 'oooh'.

As with all my new pets, I gently bit each kitten on the face. This is how I let my animals know that I am now their mother.

Candor is the only way I know how to do it. I'm way too old to change. At the end of the day, I believe the truth is stronger than any lie that's out there.

But not like this: not with the house just an afterimage, and my mom a spirit, and my dad...recycled." "Carter Kane, Chapter 41

I have no idea why, and this is others' observations of me - I tend to be in the realm of these very complicated personalities. I guess I enjoy corralling that.