"Writing is an intuitive process; we must trust our intuition." Part One, Ladders to the Dark, p. 9.

"Since I think of poets and poetry as increasingly outside mainstream culture, the desire, however inchoate, to write poems and then, perhaps, to become a poet must be predicated on something other than usual ambitions." Part One, Ladders to the Dark, p. 29.

"We live by metaphor, even if we are not given to translating into words those complex combinations of emotions and the sensuous information our brains accumulate." Part Two, The Things of this World, p. 49.

"Poems begin where ordinary conversation leaves off." Part Two, The Things of this World, p. 51.

"Self-importance restricts the writer's freedom to pursue the whole of a situation confronting him or her." Part Three, Who's Talking and Why? p. 68.

"Letting one's writing originate from the perspective of an inanimate thing radicalizes context and empathy." Part Three...