Amy Gerstler

I think part of being human is learning to roll with the punches, to deal with any kind of personal or professional disaster that might crop up. You have to learn to deal with that stuff or not survive.

My main ambition as a teenager was to somehow resurrect the dark-minded writer Franz Kafka and become his girlfriend.

I don't write to create performance material; I write to make books.

Only recently have I realized that being different is not something you want to hide or squelch or suppress.

I've always liked wearing black. Hats with veils would suit me just fine.

I don't like scaring people off. When I tell people I'm a writer, they look kind of interested. Then I tell them that I write poetry, and they think I'm weird.

Ideally, I'd love to write poems that intrigued humans across the board: literary folk and academics as well as... dog-walkers, doctors, plumbers, chefs, math professors, jugglers, etc.

Disaster, to me, means in some big or small way, things going wrong. And that's obviously a matter of perception, right? Let's say your puppy chewed up all the shoes in your house. She probably had a fine time doing that. In her mind, a red letter day, the highlight of her puppy life.

My work is mostly about longing, human relationships, science and children - and a little bit about ghosts and reincarnation.

One of those quiet types who logs a lot of time in the bedlam of her head, I sometimes need to be startled awake to the fact that the outside world still exists.

Film and TV are the most popular mediums in America. Literature and poetry are possibly the most under-recognized art forms.

The human imagination can connect to practically anything.