Amity Gaige Quotations

I often read poetry to 'warm up' before I write.

Be happy. Decide to be happy. If you want to be happy, be happy! No one cares if you're happy or not, so why wait for permission? And did it really matter if you had been deeply unhappy in your past? Who but you remembered that?

To be a writer, open your heart. Keep it open. You can't be a writer with a closed heart.

Childhood is supposed to be happy, and if you can't remember yours with any happiness, what hope have you later, when life starts handing you fresh grief?

Oh, I'm a pretty bad poet. This has been corroborated by others.

When you feel the need to moan and groan, laugh with woeful recognition and eat flaky pastries. If you hear yourself taking the art of complaining a little too seriously, ask yourself what you're trying to accomplish, exactly.

If you could literally 'rid' yourself of your problems by voicing them, I'd be all for it. But since that isn't so, why not reserve the spoken word for functional interactions and witticisms, if not declarations of love?

I do think, in general, children are so perceptive, and they watch and they get so much, and that's wonderful. And it's also difficult for them because they see so much, but they don't understand.

I often heard Latvians compare Russia and America. Latvians find both countries and their leaders possessed of the same mysterious confidence.

In the name of 'mutual assistance,' the Soviet Union would occupy Latvia until 1991, and it continues to occupy Latvia: in the obedient, epic lines at the post office, in the fug of coal smoke outside cities, in the notorious apartment buildings made of bricks of radioactive compressed ash.