I have tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy.

- Kay Ryan

It isn't ever delicate to live.

- Kay Ryan

I don't think any poetry is written that isn't primarily written to the self, in a way... I'm always talking to myself. But I seem to want somebody e…

- Kay Ryan

What keeps me writing is that I can only know through writing. My major sense organ is apparently a pencil.

- Kay Ryan

Failure: the renewable resource.

- Kay Ryan

Who would have guessed it possible that waiting is sustainable. A place with its own harvest.

- Kay Ryan

As for reality, I don't even have any interest in that word.

- Kay Ryan

A lot of the job that one has to do as a writer is to protect the thing that doesn't match the world.

- Kay Ryan

Small presses take chances. Chances are at the heart of all the literature we later know as great.

- Kay Ryan