When I was in college, I lost my scholarship one year. I had enough money for tuition, but not room and board. So I camped in the hills.

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.

If you're imaginatively responsible to the place you live in, you understand the watershed.

The birds are silent in the woods. / Just wait: soon enough / You will be quiet too

Imagination runs through the places where we live like water. We need both things-a living knowledge of the land and a live imagination of it and our place in it- if we are going to preserve it.

Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free.

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

Positive strength, positive action.

You’ve loved with intensity and passion, and have learned to hide your heartache, learned to press your handkerchief back into your pocket and pretend that you are okay.

It's called talent. I just have it. I can't explain it. You either have it or you don't.

We tried to present an emotional scrapbook of what it felt like to be a band member on this 20-year journey.

That's what I'd call him if he was my dog. Jacket-humper. Kinda had a ring to it. Although it seemed a little long for vet visits and intros to lady dogs.

I can't believe there will ever be a time when the book is truly obsolete. It is the perfect technology and feeds the soul.

I wonder which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our President's personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad?

You see, some non-Catholic friends of mine have questioned the depth of my faith because of the fact that I have a good education.

There is no decision that we can make that doesn't come with some sort of balance or sacrifice.

I will be ruthless in cutting out waste, streamlining structures and improving efficiency.