Certain springs are tapped only when you're alone.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.

Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.

I feel we are all islands - in a common sea.

A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.

My passport photo is one of the most remarkable photographs I have ever seen- no retouching, no shadows, no flattery-just stark me.

When I cannot write a poem, I bake biscuits and feel just as pleased.

Don't wish me happiness - I don't expect to be happy it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor - I will need them all.

There is no way to clearly capture or sum up life...when fully lived.

I decided to stay in bed until noon. Maybe by then half the world would be dead and it would only be half as hard to take.

Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime and departing leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.

Anytime you write about priests or cops, they're hot-button professions.

Faith is fudamentally a kind of folly.

When she is alone in the rooms I hear her humming to keep herself from thinking.

You have to give an editor something to change, or he gets fretful. After he pees in it, he likes the flavor better, so he buys it.

Don't let doing enough be good enough.

Yes, Jenna, I love you with all my heart. And with my atoms and molecules and electrons and whatever further breakdown you require.

Remind yourself that you cannot fail at being yourself.