Half joking, I say to students, “if you don’t want your life to change, don’t start writing.”

Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some under culture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.

Don Delillo, Novelist                                                                                                         

Newest book of poetry

“The best writing we do requires courage, but courage doesn’t just arrive unbidden. Courage is a muscle -- it only grows when we use it. The word heart or ‘coeur’ comes from the same root as the word courage. We train the physical heart by being active and exercising it; we train the writer’s heart by exercising it -- by saying what we hardly dare to say. By doing what we hardly dare to do. ”  RL