“The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seaswhere we would dive for pearls. My lovers wordswere shooting stars which fell to earth as kisseson these lip...”

“But behind each player sttod a line of ghosts unable to win. Eve. Ashputtel. Marilyn Monroe. Rapunzel slashing wildly at her hair. Bessie Smith unloved and down and out. Bluebeard's wives, Henry VI...”

“I'm not the first or the lastto stand on a hillock,watching the man she marriedprove to the worldhe's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pi”

“Then he started his period.One week in bed.Two doctors in.Three painkillers four times a day.And later a letter to the powers-that-bedemanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year.”

“Poetry, above all, is a series of intense moments - its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotion.”

“Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head, warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”