Victoria Chang Quotes

There's an attraction to emotional clusters or hypocrisies or awkwardness. A desire to expose something or point at something that's already poking out.

I question my own talent and ability to make creative work every single day.

I think my brain is full of collisions and that's how I like to read and process information. I'm always comparing things and I think I do that subconsciously when I'm reading books of poetry.

I think I've always felt very isolated, and I'm sure lots of poets do.

The whole process of getting a book published is just part of the process. The last of the process that I enjo

Love Poem with Peanut Shells"

Now I am in the warm oil of your mouth,
comfortably sleeping in your throat. We build
with flagstone, shop for sconces and radiance.
Your large hands bundle and stack wood into walls.
You digest my shape, unlit layer, lung. Light
begins here, where we are one decimal point, where
I stand with a cool blue hat that covers my eyes,
red shoes that drop anchor. Where we sit in bars
with peanut shells with Mikes and Leroys and Toms.
Where you counsel me on lips and throat. Where
you love the hiss of my atom. Where the ocean is zero
miles from everywhere. Here, madness has no map.
Here, God is abridged. 0 to be loved this way.
To have lips that bear fruit. To be cancelled.

I think my way of being "funny" is just saying things that people think but have learned not to say, whereas, I haven't learned not to say them.

I'm a total bottoms-up kind of person. I like things to bubble up.

Sometimes I feel like I'm on top of the world, and other mornings I feel like crap.

I love being part of poetry conversations. I love talking about what I've read.

Most of my writing friends are working in academia. Most of my business school friends are always talking about bringing companies public, and money, and making money, and lots and lots of money. It's just a different environment.

Everyone always says that having kids is messy and sloppy. It's true, but you as a parent have to try to bring some boundaries and control over that experience, or you'd have out-of-control kids.

I feel like I give myself all day long to other people and other things, and I still seem like I have something to write once in awhile. Not often, though.

Having children can be such a gift, but it can be a crushing experience for a certain kind of mom. And I am that certain kind of mom.

People who are too uptight make me nervous.

I've always felt alone and isolated, and living on the West Coast, there's no poetry community out here, and if there is, it's really spread out - because it's LA, it's spread out.

Whether people like your work or not, but it's also based on a lot of other things - geography, who you happen to connect with and where they sit in that ladder - and all of that felt really isolating and disheartening to me when I figured it out.

I love when I meet generous poets, and generous meaning nice people, who give to the poetry community, who do interviews, read other people's books, and talk about them, spread the ... love, I guess. That means a lot to me.

There's so much stuff being written! Every year, how many books come out? I can't keep up, and I read a lot. It's amazing.

We're all just a part of this large, spiraling, constantly fluid hierarchy and changing. At some points in your life, you feel crushed by that, depending on who you come in contact with.

I've always wanted editors that actually edited my poems.

Sometimes people ask me to do stuff in New York, like "Can you read at this thing?" And I say, "Nooo, I can't just get on a plane with these two screaming children - I can't just get rid of them on such short notice and take vacation and fly over to New York."

Most people are trying to go digital, and trying to do different things with poetry. McSweeney's is going in the opposite direction - going more classic, and retro, which is all coming back.

I think I love humor in poetry, but not that slapstick cheap easy humor, but that uncomfortable, "did she say that out loud?" kind of humor.

My life in general, orderly or not, it allows me more freedom in my own writing. Sometimes I wonder, though - I have friends that sit around and just write all day. And I think it's the coolest thing.

Our lives are short and everything sort of regresses to the mean.