Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.

Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one can never tire of exploring. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry.

If you write fiction, you're by yourself. There are certain advantages to that in that you don't have to explain anything to anybody. But when you get in with others who share the loneliness of the whole enterprise, you're not lonely anymore.

What I wrote all the time when I was a kid - I don't want to call it 'poetry,' because it wasn't poetry. I was not that kind of a writer. I was a rhymer. I was a fan of Dorothy Parker's, so maybe I wrote poetry to that extent, but my main focus was the humor of it, and word construction, and the slant. Your words, it's a very powerful experience.

Composers in the old days used to keep strictly to the base of the theme, as their real subject. Beethoven varies the melody, harmony and rhythms so beautifully.

It seems to me that 'women's writing' by nature would not seek equivalence in the male world. It would be a writing that sought to express a distinction, not deny it.