“It is possible to make family any way you like. It is possible to love men without rage. There are thousands of ways to love men.”

“Leslie Marmon Silko whispers the story is long. No, longer. Longer than that even. Longer than anything. With Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath drink at the bar. Laugh the dark laughter in the dark ligh...”

“But more often there are regular people in the pool. Beautiful women seniors doing water aerobics - mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers - their massive breasts and guts reminding you ho...”

“Sometimes a mind is just born late, coming through waves on a slower journey. You were never, in the end, alone. Isnt it a blessing, what becomes from inside the alone.”

“I considered quitting graduate school. I paid my ticket, I rode the ride. Right? Half the people I started with quit. I did not have to continue toward scholar. But something wouldnt let me. Some d...”

“We are all swimmers before the dawn of oxygen and earth. We all carry the memory of that breathable blue past.”

“Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.”

“You are the owner and keeper of your word. Distribute them wisely.”

“I found a word, and carefully placed it next to another. Soon I had a bridge and a pathway to a wonderful future.”

“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....”