Beauty is not a means, not a way of furthering a thing in the world. It is a result; it belongs to ordering, to form, to aftereffect.

A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.

The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.

My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight.

Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers . . . great talkers.

Insight doesn't happen often on the click of the moment, like a lucky snapshot, but comes in its own time and more slowly and from nowhere but within.

No art ever came out of not risking your neck.

it doesn t matter if it takes a long time getting there; the point is to have a destination.

The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.

We are the breakers of our own hearts

People are mostly layers of violence and tenderness wrapped like bulbs, and it is difficult to say what makes them onions or hyacinths.

Trying to fit in will not change a society. To change it, you have to be brave, fearless, and strong enough to withstand societal criticism so that you may break the boundary and let light come in.

The human race could go extinct and I for one would not shed any tears.

Sleep is good, he said, And books are better.

The blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning.

I always want to be the best at whatever I'm attempting to do.

To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of unhappiness.

The greatest risk is really to take no risk at all. You've got to go out there, jump off the cliff, and take chances.

We have missed him in the sunshine, in the storm, in the twilight, ever since.

I think I love humor in poetry, but not that slapstick cheap easy humor, but that uncomfortable, "did she say that out loud?" kind of humor.