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The form of my poem rises out of a past that so overwhelms the present with its worth and vision that I'm at a loss to explain my delusion that there exist any real links between that past and a future worthy of it.

It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.

Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.

I do sometimes look back at things I've written in the past, and think, 'I just don't remember being the person who wrote that.'

The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.

Memory as an article of faith often comes naturally to writers, who by temperament are likely to be diarists and record keepers, forever searching past events for elusive patterns - and forever believing that such patterns are to be found.

All bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imitation, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand.

Writing reminds you of how much there is in your life that stands outside your explanations. In that way, it's almost a journey into faith and doubt at once.

The illusion is that most of my work is simply about past events: a point in history and nothing else.