A page with a poem on it is less attractive than a page with a poem on it and some tea stains.

Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.

One of the principle qualities of pain is that it demands an explanation.

To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.

The words we read and words we write never say exactly what we mean. The people we love are never just as we desire them. The two symbola never perfectly match. Eros is in between.

You remember too much," my mother said to me recently. "Why hold onto all that?" And I said, "where can I put it down?

Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.

Myths are stories about people who become too big for their lives temporarily, so that they crash into other lives or brush against gods. In crisis their souls are visible.

Under the seams runs the pain.

When I desire you a part of me is gone.

If your way of life is writing, then everything that happens becomes a sentence.

Farmers are patient men. They got to be. Got to see those seeds come up week by week, fraction by fraction, and sweat it out for some days not knowing yet is it weeds or vegetables.

Some writers achieve great popularity and then disappear forever. The bestseller lists of the past fifty years are, with a few lively exceptions, a sombre graveyard of dead books.

Gideon touched her cheek, lightly, with the tips of his fingers. “Did you know your name means ‘wisdom’? It was very well-given.

And concentrating on the spot where the two spindles should be is the closest I get to looking Hannah's eyes as she tells my story.

People want to believe you are sincerely interested in them as a person, not just what they can do for you.

I don't like closed systems.

For horror movies, color is reassuring because, at least in older films, it adds to the fakey-ness.

If the coyote's in your living room pissing on your couch, it's not the coyote's fault. It's your fault for not shooting him.

You can only see in others what is inside of you.