The artist must create himself or be born again.

You have come to the shore. There are no instructions.

Both art and faith are dependent on imagination; both are ventures into the unknown.

I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer.

Nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living at peace would have.

It's when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart.

Grief is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it.

In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.

Marvelous Truth, confront us at every turn, in every guise.

One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language.

But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.

She felt lately as though she had served her purpose, done her job, and been dispensed with, not only by her children, but by her husband as well.

you make autumn misttaste like champagne and turn winter raininto the elixir of life itself.

The fear of love can be replaced by the love of fear

I don't pretend to love someone who hurts me.I do something that prevent us hurting each other.

After graduation, I took a job with Manufacturers Hanover Trust in software development. I don't think I was there more than a month.

A constitutional state is like daily bread, like water to drink and air to breath, and the best thing about democracy is that it is the only system capable of securing the constitutional state.

The days when a car aficionado could repair his or her own car are long past, due primarily to the high software content.

Today, to allege corruption seems to be the pastime of most people. All kinds of allegations are leveled. I think it is self-defeating.

When you grow up on a dairy farm, cows don't take a day off. So you work every day and my dad always said, 'No one can outwork you,'

O you beast! I'll so maul you and your toasting-iron, That you shall think the devil is come from hell.