I suppose there's something to be said for the sheer reinforcement of our beliefs, but really I think poetry is more useful as disenchantment than enchantment.

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.

If you're imaginatively responsible to the place you live in, you understand the watershed.

The birds are silent in the woods. / Just wait: soon enough / You will be quiet too

Imagination runs through the places where we live like water. We need both things-a living knowledge of the land and a live imagination of it and our place in it- if we are going to preserve it.

Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free.

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

What is once well done is done forever.

A conflict begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, not in the hilltops.

By far the strongest poison to the human spirit is the inability to forgive oneself or another person. Forgiveness is no longer an option but a necessity for healing.

Its hard for me to grasp that I might somehow be my fathers equal in any way.

She looks like someone I want to know, or maybe even be.

Debates conceal rather than reveal the truth. Truth is revealed in solitude.

If you tell a friend a secret, she will keep the secret by telling only one other person.

Of course he was a part of what I hated about myself. Everything was a part of what I hated about myself. It wasn't really personal.

I remain a humanist. We are a very curious race.

If I had a dime for everytime that I was wrong, I'd be broke.