We're all writing out of a wound, and that's where our song comes from. The wound is singing. We're singing back to those who've been wounded.

You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake.

Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's.

That's how it is sometimes--God comes to your window, all bright light and black wings, and you're just too tired to open it.

A poem is like a child; at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its own way in the world.

Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question.

Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won’t.

I have always loved too much, or not enough.

We continue to speak, if only in whispers, to something inside us that longs to be named.

Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.

Maybe it's what we don't say/that saves us.

Christians walk as strangers in the world: They are untamed. They are free. To persevere with love, yet untamed by man, is often what leaves that open space for divine revelation when God so wills.

Mad bad and dangerous to know.

Bigness comes from doing many small things well. ... Individually they are not very dramatic transactions. Together though they add up.

There are three stages of an actor's career. Young, old, and "You look good".

Bad news has never been broken gently in my family. Because, breaking it gently takes a few extra seconds. And who's got that kinda time? Hey, we maybe failures, but we are very busy.

The only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.

I don't have a lot to share with other men. My heart sinks when I get into a taxi and someone starts talking to me about football.

Sittin there wishin their problems became ours, cause we have nothin in common since I done became star.

Be unswervingly and eternally loyal to the story.

I was always much more shy. All I knew was that I loved to act. But I don't know about the other part of it. I'm not sure I had the chutzpah to go and prove yourself.