And then we ease him out of that worn-out body with a kiss, and he's gone like a whisper, the easiest breath.

Love, I think, is a gateway to the world, not an escape from it.

Even sad stories are company. And perhaps that's why you might read such a chronicle, to look into a companionable darkness that isn't yours.

No such thing, the queen said, as too many sequins.

We long to connect; we fear that if we do, our freedom and individuality will disappear.

One ambition of poetry, certainly, is to create a reverberant silence in its wake, one that means more or differently than the silence that preceded the poem.

The World Will Break Your Heart. Grief might be, in some ways, the long aftermath of love, the internal work of knowing, holding, more fully valuing what we have lost.

What did you think, that joy / was some slight thing?

There are those fortunate hours when the world consents to be made into a poem.

We love disasters that have nothing to do with us

Because the golden egg gleamed in my basket once, though my childhood became an immense sheet of darkening water I was Noah, and I was his ark, and there were two of every animal inside me

Suicide isn't something people do to hurt other people. It's something people do to release themselves from pain.

I work through teams. It’s the only way I know how to work.

I've always thought, and it gets tested at times, that I have a great faith in the fundamental goodness of human beings.

That would bring tears to the eyes of a rocking chair.

Casting is everything. I put a huge amount of work into casting, and consistently across my career, I am most proud of my bold choices I made in casting.

There may be luck in getting a good job-but there's no luck in keeping it.

When you finish a film, if you believed in your character, you're empty.

I knew right then and there nothing was ever going to change. It wouldn't matter if I was tall or short or fat or thin or absent every day. I was a loser from birth.

As long as a man does not sin, he is feared. As soon as he sins, he himself is in fear.