Words are the weights which hold our history in place.

Step out from behind the words. When you're a writer you can imagine that the words speak for you and are you, but they're not. You are this living breathing bad hair day kind of person.

Have you ever watched a leaf leave a tree? It falls upward first, and then it drifts toward the ground, just as I find myself drifting towards you.

I believe friends enclose us, like a pair of parentheses. Each one knows us differently, each sustains us in a different way.

You know how a river goes on and on? That's my love for you.

Nature is not the number-one mystery, I’ve learned. It’s the heart that takes top honors.

Forgiveness, which is the place that every story turns, the chance we give each other.

Nothing erodes [a mother's love]. It is not sand on a beach. It is the nuclear heart of things-hard as the rock of this earth.

We grow too old to lose old friends.

In high school, my desire for friendship far outweighed my talent for it.

How do you know when an apology is true—when it means something, or can change something, or will last outside the moment?

To shut your eyes is to travel.

I've never been a great one for technology.

A warrior is free to be a hero and pull off daring do and the soldier is irresponsible if he does it.

I have written some poetry that I don't understand myself.

I've never been a feminist.

I think one of the biggest curses in the U.S. is that we have only two political parties.

Always remember, joy is not incidental to spiritual quest. It is vital.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

Peeple of zee wurl, relax

Sometimes I think the environment in which we operate is entirely too secular. The fact that we have freedom of religion doesn't mean we need to try to have freedom from religion