I did not know him, I knew my idea of him.

I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky.

Poets are like steam valves, where the ordinary feelings of ordinary people can escape and be shown.

Take your vitamins. Exercise. Just work to love yourself as much as you can - not more than the people around you but not so much less.

The older I get, the more I see the power of that young woman, my mother.

Writing or making anything-a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake-has self-respect in it. You're working. You're trying. You're not lying down on the ground, having given up.

There is something in me maybe someday to be written; now it is folded, and folded, and folded, like a note in school.

The older I get, the more I feel.

I have learned to get pleasure from speaking of pain

I didn't have time to sit down and look at the work of a year and choose what to type.

I did not deceive him, he did not deceive me, I did not leave him, he did not leave me, I freed him, he freed me.

If a country is not governed well, all sort of disasters will become a routine of that country!

A good deed that follows upon another is the reward for the first one, and an evil deed that follows upon another is a punishment for the first one.

Details create the big picture.

Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in.

Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.

Jesus brings mystery, paradox, and tension - rarely did someone get a straight answer out of Him

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Work is the best wonder drug ever devised by God.

The journeythe journey, I promise you, is the greatest thing ever. The destination always takes care of itself.

Dare and the world always yields; or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and it will succumb.