Very few people really see things unless they've had someone in early life who made them look at things. And name them too. But the looking is primary, the focus.

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.

You have to want the book enough to read it.

The throne of grace is the gospel of salvation.

Set fire to the broken pieces

The Olympics are never just about sports.

No one is perfect... absolutely no one. Like precious stones, we have a few flaws, but why focus on that? Focus on what you like about yourself, and that will bring you happiness and peace.

Like a pet fish unaware of the fishbowl it lives in, each of us inherently discriminates against young people without knowing it.

None meet life honestly and few heroically.

Huck Finn. Loss of identity drives people to nostalgia. Electronic man has no physical body, so he [Jimmy Carter] puts nostalgia in its place.

My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.

When you write, you want to get rid of the world, don’t you? Of course you do. When you’re writing, you’re creating your own worlds.