I've been enormously fortunate. People say, 'How do you feel about your reputation?' My real belief is that I have exactly the reputation I deserve... on the whole, I feel comfortable with myself.

I can say exactly what I feel about any issue, and I'm going to do that.

I tell people I never got to hear Dylan Thomas read because my husband wouldn't let me, because he thought it would be a sort of bad influence. People say, 'And you didn't go?' They're so surprised because the me they know would have gone. And I say I was very much a 'yes, dear' wife.

The more people say nice things about me, the more I feel it's false.

I'm free. I'm free to say what I feel.

As I remember, the first real poem I wrote was about the wheat fields between Spokane and Pullman, to the south.