We learn to treasure words that people call us; we learn to live by words that hurt. We cannot toss them aside, so in time they become our dignity.

Love, I think, is a gateway to the world, not an escape from it.

Even sad stories are company. And perhaps that's why you might read such a chronicle, to look into a companionable darkness that isn't yours.

No such thing, the queen said, as too many sequins.

We long to connect; we fear that if we do, our freedom and individuality will disappear.

One ambition of poetry, certainly, is to create a reverberant silence in its wake, one that means more or differently than the silence that preceded the poem.

The World Will Break Your Heart. Grief might be, in some ways, the long aftermath of love, the internal work of knowing, holding, more fully valuing what we have lost.

What did you think, that joy / was some slight thing?

There are those fortunate hours when the world consents to be made into a poem.

We love disasters that have nothing to do with us

Because the golden egg gleamed in my basket once, though my childhood became an immense sheet of darkening water I was Noah, and I was his ark, and there were two of every animal inside me

Be true to who you are. Don't let the world tell you who to be.

There is always a storm. There is always rain. Some experience it. Some live through it. And others are made from it.

I would never dream of killing an excellent tailor, not even to keep a secret that could endanger my life.

As I drifted off to sleep, I could hear him breathing, and that definitely helped me relax.

We are losing the 'War on Drugs,' which means there's a war going on and people on drugs are winning it.

It is a matter of regret that many low, mean suspicions turn out to be well founded.

Anyone that would letterspace blackletter would steal sheep.

Spin the parasol three times and repeat after me: I shield in the name of fashion. I accessorize for one and all. Pursuit of truth is my passion. This I vow by the great parasol.

Our treasures trifles seem, and all our life is dreaming, and the dreams themselves are dreams.

No pen, no words, no image can express to you the loveliness of my only, only Lord Jesus.