I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare.

She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.

You were my home, Mother. I had no home but you

Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.

Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.

Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.

Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.

I took the volume to a table, opened its soft, ivory pages... and fell into it as into a pool during dry season.

In urge to modern don't slip much that you can't find yourself someday & die in confusion or end up in doing rubbish. Fly but by realizing your root.

This is the kind of thing that makes sense to them

A boy trying out a man's language.

He moves in darkness as it seems to meNot of woods only and the shade of trees.

Boys mystified me, although I dreamed vaguely of men.

In hard times, no less than in prosperity, preserve equanimity.

I renew my call for the occupier (the United States) to leave our land. The departure of the occupier will mean stability for Iraq, victory for Islam and peace and defeat for terrorism and infidels.

Softball is what old men play to try to feel young again.

At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God’s hand until we learn to hear Him.

Taking responsibility means never blaming anyone else for anything you are being..... doing.... having, or feeling.