There's a part of every living thing that wants to become itself: the tadpole into the frog, the chrysalis into the butterfly, a damaged human being into a whole one.That is spirituality.

Allow yourself to release the emotions you have struggled all your life to contain.

There is a comfort in knowing that you don’t have to pretend anymore, that you are going to do everything within your power to heal.

What would people look like if we could see them as they are, soaked in honey, stung and swollen, reckless, pinned against time?

It's impossible to feel good about yourself if you are doing things that you aren't proud of. . . . It's essential that you . . . [do] things you can respect and admire.

I live in Santa Cruz. I moved here in 1974 and couldn't leave.

Everyone has the right to tell the truth about her own life.

Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.

So much inspires me. People living their lives with courage, beauty of all kinds, nature in all its aspects, people I love and people I hardly know, and, of course, other poets.

Poetry is the most intimate of all writing. I want to speak first from me to myself and then from me to you.

If you’ve managed to do one good thing, the ocean doesn’t care. But when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth, the earth, ever so slightly, fell toward the apple as well.

I will be the one to leave you.

I first heard about 'genes' when I was six years old. At dinner one night, I heard my mom tell my sister, 'It's in your genes.'

Just days after Mitt Romney suggested he might run for president, there's been a backlash. The backlash is led by Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, and just to hedge his bets on every issue, Mitt Romney.

I'm not some big party chick, so it's not like I have to keep up my big social life.

What I was saying is that Israel cannot count on the United States.

I look upon literature as an art, and I believe that if you misuse it or abuse it, it will leave you. It is not a thing that you can nail down and use as you want. You have to let it use you, too.

I got caught kissing. Like by my parents. It was so horrible. It's so embarrassing, I'm blushing.

Outside literature, high-flown sentiments are merely exasperating.

He travels safe and not unpleasantly who is guarded by poverty and guided by love.

We'll look at the japanese launch as a model and aspire to have things go as well as they did over there.