To the poet, his travels, his adventures, his loves, his indignations are finally resolved in verse, and this, in the end becomes his permanent, indestructible life.

I have felt at times with groups of children that I was really being what every poet would like to be - a bard in the old sense.

I have published so many books in so many years. I can't complain about any lack of attention. But I've never been placed as a Southern writer, which I really am. So I was happy finally to be published by someone in the South.

To Tennessee Williams we owe a special debt. In a tragic age, he has transformed loneliness by naming it for us, suffered sordidness with beauty, graced poor hurt lives with love and pity.

I was lucky to have such a loving, crazy family. I learned to give and share.

I was a very religious child - I went to synagogue at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And I remember my religiousness as good - I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imaginative world apart from the practical world.

We need to do teacher training to educate them about what temperament means. Shyness is painful and you want to help a child with shyness - but the underlying temperament of being a careful, sensitive person is to be honoured, valued and respected.

That first year after a child, I kind of just hunker down at home - I surrender to that side of me. I don't try to get my body back or be in the world; I go the opposite way.