I never fantasized or invented a thing, not one thing. I knew every single thing I ever wrote about.

All creatures are flawed, but out of the flaw may come the universe.

When you have examined all the illusions of life and know that there isn’t any reality, but you nevertheless go on, then you are a mature human being. You accept the idea that it is...

There were also some cruel reviews by women, but the tone of the male reviewers, sometimes hysterical, was different. I have suffered, but I don’t want to name names-but there have been men who have...

I’ve been willing to go for years without publishing. That’s been my career.

All my writing is about the recognition that there is no single reality. But the beauty of it is that you nevertheless go on, walking towards utopia, which may not exist, on a bridge which...

It’s the thing I never could write, the idea of identity and passage of the soul.

I knew Anais Nin, who called me after I had been away for a few years. She was seeking help because at that time no one would give her a decent review. She was made...

If there is no certain reality, the idea of following a leader must be scrutinized.

A good writer cannot avoid having social consciousness. I don’t mean this about small pieces of writing, but about a big book. If it’s a big book, there has to be more than one undertow.

I was not influenced by Joyce although he’s a great writer, and I love his work. I was influenced by Saint Augustine.

A lawyer I once knew told me of a strange case, a suffragette who had never married. After her death, he opened her trunk and discovered 50 wedding gowns.

Is it experimental to have been influenced by the Bible? By Saint Augustine?

I would teach from nine to four, sleep an hour, and write from six until midnight, night after night.

I bear a heavy gift.

The first money I ever had was when I received an award from the American Association of University Women.

When the dream came into being, I always pursued it.

At the age of 18 all young poets are sure they will be dead at 21 – of old age.

I think that the style is the writing, a beautiful sense of style. And if you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter what you write, it doesn’t really make any difference. I’m not speaking of...

All the books I have written have been one book, from the beginning.

I think most people don’t like others who, without a voice of their own, emulate the other. I certainly don’t want anybody just to pick up my thoughts and hand them back to me.

I never thought of myself as either a woman or a man. I thought of myself as a person who was born to a writer, who was doomed to be a writer.

Like Kay Boyle, whose work I’m wild about, I could have married, written a book with every baby, a baby with every book.

Dreiser… I love… and almost wouldn’t speak to anyone who ever attacked him.

I think there is a rage against women. I’ve come to see that now although at the time I did not notice it. I was preoccupied with my teaching and my writing.

I’m quite sure that most writers would sustain real poetry if they could, but it takes devotion and talent.

I think the category between fiction and non-fiction is nothing. The poetry of non-fiction is as fabulous as any poetry you could ever write in fiction. Poets have greatly influenced me. The only difference between...

I don’t believe there can be a poetic novel without political consciousness. I have a strong political conscience.

I would never write realistic prose. I don’t like people who try to write in a poetic style, but in the course of their book abandon it for realism, and weave back and forth like...

If you don’t have obsessions, don’t write. my characters are obsessed.

One day I bumped into a group of coal miners from the Ozarks, wandering coal miners living a gypsy life… I started to speak with these coal miners, and became very interested in them.

Life has no beginning, middle or end.

He is but as the stubble of the field, and yet he has no beard.

The asexual angel, neither male nor female… unable to live without her mask of illusions… showed herself to be the denuded character every person would be if confronted with the loss of their illusions as...

If you know anything about James Whitcomb Riley, you know that Little Orphan Annie is one of the most fantastic characters who ever lived in America before Charlie Chaplin.

Some of the poetic writers who insert passages of realism in their texts have no underlying philosophy to uphold them, and revert to realism.

If you understand hallucination and illusion, you don’t blindly follow any leader. You must know if the person is sane or insane, over the abyss.

My first attempt to write about Robert Owen was in the form of poetry. Then I turned it into a blank verse poem, but I discovered that I couldn’t fit in all the facts, which...

I believe that all my work explores the human desire or obsession for utopias, and the structure of all my works is the search for utopias lost and rediscovered.

The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.

I would say my theme has always been paradise lost, always the lost cause, the lost leader, the lost utopia.

I see myself as traditional even though I know you see my work as experimental. I don’t really consider Sterne, Joyce, and Proust experimental either because the tradition of their writing goes back a long...

I’m as much influenced by Joseph Smith and the Mormons as I am, more so, than by Eliot. Actually, I’m much more influenced by the poetry of the Mormons.