Reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil.

Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city.

Long after you’ve forgotten someone’s voice, you can still remember the sound of their happiness or their sadness. You can feel it in your body.

The truth doesn't care what we think of it.

No one is born just once. If you're lucky, you'll emerge again in someone's arms; or unlucky, wake when the long tail of terror brushes the inside of your skull.

Important lessons: look carefully; record what you see. Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful.

If love wants you; if you've been melted down to stars, you will love with lungs and gills; with feathers and scales; with warm blood and cold.

Some stones are so heavy only silence helps you carry them!

The best teacher lodges an intent not in the mind but in the heart.

It is not a person’s depth you must discover, but their ascent. Find their path from depth to ascent.

I'm naive enough to think that love is always good no matter how long ago, no matter the circumstances.

Abundant living is realizing that life is a privilege whether it’s adhering to our scripts or not.

Everybody’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.

Day blame ornery youngins.

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.

Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.

Praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance.

Consideration touches more deeply and longer than passion.

Sometimes I sing and dance around the house in my underwear. Doesn't make me Madonna. Never will.

The way to form transcends its own destination, goes beyond the end of the way itself.

An ugly woman with a gun is a terrible thing.