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If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.

To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.

I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times.

To be a poet, it's a challenge to do it in poverty, to do it in wealth. To do it in the academy, to do it in a relationship where you're happy. Everything changes the game. To do it in the awkward state of love, despair, dying. You just have to work it.

It's absolutely crucial to maintain my life as a poet.

To be a poet is as serious, long-term and natural as the effort to be the best human you can be. To express something well is not a question of having a top-class education and understanding poetic forms: rather, it's a question of paying attention.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative language, which goes against the trend in fiction.

If you can be anything else but a writer, be it.

Poets are always ahead of things in a certain way, their sense of language and their vision.