Eileen Myles

“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.”

“Older men get lovable, and older women get monstrous.”

“I'm using my degree. You know, I studied English and American literature in college, and now I'm an American poet.”

“I'm not against wealth; I just think everybody should have it, same as health.”

“I've had a lifelong waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop feeling when something good happens.”

“Weirdly, the past starts to be about something else. It becomes about style in a way that it wasn't about, and I don't mean writing style, but cultural style.”

“Poetry always, always, always is a key piece of democracy.”

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

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

“If I had been a good student and an achiever, I might have been excited by a more systematic approach to writing than what I do.”

“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.”

“I'm proud that I've never stopped writing about being poor.”

“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.”

“I made myself into a poet because it was the first thing I really loved. It was an act of will.”

“Living in literature and love is the best thing there is. You're always home.”

“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.”

“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.”