How are poets able to unzip what they see around them, calling forth a truer essence from behind a common fact? Why, reading a verse about a pear, do you see past the fruit in so transcendent a way?

My mind was in my heart, anchored like a bright kite in a safe place.

Don't let your habits become handcuffs

You are born into your family and your family is born into you. No returns. No exchanges.

People say you should give until it hurts. I say you should give until it stops hurting. Know what I mean?

The seasons tell us, everything in organic life tells us, that there is no holding on; still, we try to do just that. Sometimes, though, we learn the kind of wisdom that celebrates the open hand.

You feel the call. That's the important thing. Now answer it as fully as you can. Take the risk to let all that is in you, out. Escape into the open.

Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.

I cried until my eyes swelled shut, and then I slept, a black, dreamless sleep from which I awoke amazingly refreshed, at least until I remembered.

I like to listen to sad music when I’m sad. It seems honest. It makes me cry, and sometimes a good cry is the only thing that can make you feel better.

There is love in holding and there is love in letting go.

At the end of the day, the questions we ask of ourselves determine the type of people that we will become.

If you are in hard times, ask yourself: “What would this problem and my life mean to people two hundred years from now?

Me: "All right, but you said we had to put emotion into our art. I don't know what that means. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel.

While most activists could use a good dose of gentleness, I think most believers could use a good dose of holy anger.

When I am in love, I am ridiculously and hopelessly romantic.

With respect to Syria, we are going to continue to work as we have over the last five, six years to push towards a political transition and settlement.

Never lick a steak knife.

I have lately got back to that glorious society called Solitude.

His writings have made me his friend.

I just kind of live a life, and I let all the gossip live somewhere else. If you go too far down the rabbit hole of what people think about you, it can change everything about who you are.