"I don't know whether a poem has be there to help to develop something. I think it's there for itself, for what the reader finds in it."

"Community means people spending time together here, and I don't think there's really that."

"The pleasure that I take in writing gets me interested in writing a poem. It's not a statement about what I think anybody else should be doing. For me, it's an interesting tension between interior and exterior."

"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."

"If I didn't already sense that I was different, I certainly was reminded, whether by my parents or by the other school kids. Not just reminded. Told... I was made to believe it wasn't right. If I went a little bit too off - slap! It was Dad's upbringing and it was Victorian, and that's the way he was."

"The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge."

"Vadim was both my teacher and my husband. I placed myself entirely in his hands."

"The real solution is to improve the incomes of the poor and provide their children with decent education."