Eileen Myles

"Poetry and novels are lists of our devotions. We love the feel of making the marks as the feelings are rising and falling."

"Poetry from the bottom up is an act of selection: you kind of feel your way through the crowds of poems. The good ones came forward a long time ago, and the bad ones fell away."

"In Arlington, people would laugh at you if you tried to get people to look at your drawings or listen to your poetry. It was like you thought you were special."

"I wasn't afraid of being poor. I didn't want to live in a big house. I'm the perfect size for poetry. I can move around."

"As things get worse, poetry gets better because it becomes more necessary."

"Poetry always, always, always is a key piece of democracy."

"Sunday is a likely day to write a poem. Because poetry is a piece of language flying around: you'll find notebooks, something on your phone. It's about finding them and getting them off that crumpled piece of paper and onto my computer."

"If the poetry world celebrate its female stars at the true level of their productivity and influence, poetry would wind up being a largely female world, and the men would leave."

"When somebody's in love with you, they think it's amazing you've written them a poem, and when they don't love you anymore, they hate those poems. They wish those poems would go away."

"Who doesn't want to be famous? I am famous. I'm dying to be on TV."

"The bag I wanted was beyond reason - something to hold my poems, twice as big as the universe and it must be androgynous."

"We're basking in language itself. The silence of my friend. My love. The one beyond words in her silence. She is always eternally before. When she speaks it is shit, a gift, something to do. In our moment, of waiting, pointing, silent gear, what we went out for—that is pointing. Shit is the award. The award is shit."

"Literature is love. I think it went like this: drawings in the cave, sounds in the cave, songs in the cave, songs about us. Later, stories about us. Part of what we always did was have sex and fight about it and break each other’s hearts. I guess there’s other kinds of love too. Great friendships. Working together. But poetry and novels are lists of our devotions. We love the feel of making the marks as the feelings are rising and falling. Living in literature and love is the best thing there is. You’re always home."