“I believed even then that if I could transform my experience into poetry I would give it the value and dignity it did not begin to possess on its own. I thought too that if I could write about it I...”

“ the river sliding along its banks, darker now than the sky descending a last time to scatter its diamonds into these black waters that contain the day that passed, the night to come. Excerpt from...”

“Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home.”

“I find you in these tears, few, useless and here at last. Don't come back. ”

“There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.”

“How weightlesswords are when nothing will do.”

“...I gave you painted air - tears I couldn't weep - truths I couldn't speak - all the words that caught in my throat...”

“He wept, and it felt as if the tears were cleansing him, as if his body needed to empty itself.”

“Prim, let go," I say harshly, because this is upsetting me and I don't want to cry. When they televise the replay of the reapings tonight, everyone will make note of my tears, and I'll be marked as...”