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.

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

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.

If you love yourself the most at your happiest moments, there is no reason not to be fond of who you are in the dark.

A poem round and perfect as a star.

Poetry is the morning dream of great minds.

Christmas sweaters are only acceptable as a cry for help.

What is a harp but an oversized cheese slicer with cultural pretensions?

I began to realise that we are all oppressed which is why I would like to do something about it, though I'm not sure where my place is.

When you see yourself quoted in print and you’re sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a misquotation.

I want you to notice is that-right here, right now-you’re okay. You may be in pain, you may be in fear, you may be in grief. But you’re here, you’re surviving; this moment is okay.

I'm at an age when my back goes out more than I do.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.