“There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject’s sake, and those who write for writing’s sake. The first kind have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth communicating, while the second kind need money and consequently write for money.”

“There's two kinds of women--those you write poems about and those you don't.”

“Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.”

“Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.”

“Emerson writes in his Journal that all men try their hands at poetry, but few know which their poems are. The poets are not those who write poems, but those who know which of the things they write are poems.”

“The best way to learn to write is to study the work of the men and women who are doing the kind of writing you want to do.”

“If I’m required to identify myself on a form, I write “teacher.” I’ve been a teacher almost as long as I’ve been writing. [Pause. ] I think of myself less as a writer than as a person who writes — or tries to. Each morning is a kind of obstacle course in which the obstacles seem to have all the advantage.”

“The only kind of writing is rewriting.”

“As Mo had said: writing stories is a kind of magic, too.”

“Poetry, at least the kind I write, is written out of immediate need”