poetry has been able to function quite directly as human interpretation of the raw, loose universe. It is a mixture, if you will, of journalism and metaphysics, or of science and religion.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.

At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.

A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.

As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net.

Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.

According to Inuit culture in Greenland, a person possesses six or seven souls. The souls take the form of tiny people scattered throughout the body.

The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.

Authors need readers and not followers. Authors need review and not Likes!

When you are through changing, you are through.

I am recording my first CD in Spanish and preparing myself for the next stage of my career.

The High Septon once told me that as we sin, so do we suffer.

Lighten grief with hopes of a brighter morrow; Temper joy, in fear of a change of fortune.

The hoary joke in the literary world, based on 'Dreams From My Father,' was that if things had worked out differently for Barack Obama, he could have made it as a writer.

We cannot have peace on Earth until we learn to speak with one voice. That voice must be the voice of reason, the voice of compassion, the voice of love. It is the voice of divinity within us.

Of all the creatures that creep, swim, or fly, Peopling the earth, the waters, and the sky, From Rome to Iceland, Paris to Japan, I really think the greatest fool is man.

Many of us refuse to grow where we are put; consequently, we take root nowhere.

It is much easier and safer to scare someone into submission than to beat them into submission.