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

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.

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.

One may prefer spring and summer to autumn and winter, but preference is hardly to the point. The earth turns, and we live in the grain of nature, turning with it.

Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.

Sometimes it felt like no one was ever there for her. Everyone thought she was so strong. And she was, for the most part. But that didn’t mean she never needed anyone to lean on.

To find your way you must first take the steps

Thoughts are like an open ocean, they can either move you forward within its waves, or sink you under deep into its abyss.

Honor, " she said, "is the coin that stays in your pocket when all your silver has been spent.

I'm not perfect. And who knows how many times I've fallen short. We all fall short. That's the amazing thing about the grace of God.

I think the best vacation is the one that relieves me of my own life for a while and then makes me long for it again.

Evolution leads the way through desire.

You know, there are some people who just don't - that cannot get comfortable behind the wheel of a car and always sort of think they're going to kill somebody.

If you excuse yourself in confession, you shut up sin within your soul, and shut out pardon.