Quote

The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.

Each reader needs to bring his or her own mind and heart to the text.

I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder.

I've never felt a need to really respond to someone else's writing.

I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.

I don't want to waste my readers' time ever. My readers are very important to me.

I'm very aware of the presence of a reader, and that probably is a reaction against a lot of poems that I do read which seem oblivious to my presence as a reader.

There are some people who have been reading me for years, and they keep saying kind things about the writing. That's what you're writing for, to get people to respond to it.