Dorianne Laux said this quote

Death comes to me again, a girlin a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling.It’s not so terrible she tells me,not like you think, all darknessand silence. There are windchimesand the smell of lemons, some daysit rains, but more often the air is dryand sweet. I sit beneath the staircasebuilt from hair and bone and listento the voices of the living. I like it,she says, shaking the dust from her hair,especially when they fight, and when they sing.

~ Dorianne Laux

Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.

~ Dorianne Laux

We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it.

~ Dorianne Laux

Poetry is an intimate act. It's about bringing forth something that's inside you--whether it is a memory, a philosophical idea, a deep love for another person or for the world, or an apprehension of the spiritual. It's about making something, in language, which can be transmitted to others--not as information, or polemic, but as irreducible art.

~ Dorianne Laux