A poem I write is not just about me; it is about national identity, not just regional but national, the history of people in relation to other people. I reach for these outward stories to make sense of my own life, and how my story intersects with a larger public history.

Now I really make the little idea from clay, and I hold it in my hand. I can turn it, look at it from underneath, see it from one view, hold it against the sky, imagine it any size I like, and really be in control almost like God creating something.

Photographers deal in things which are continuously vanishing.

The challenge for a nonfiction writer is to achieve a poetic precision using the documents of truth but somehow to make people and places spring to life as if the reader was in their presence.

I am like a caricature of myself, and I like that. It is like a mask. And for me the Carnival of Venice lasts all year long.

As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure.