I think many people love poetry who don't know they love it. People are sometimes afraid of poetry, or they've been introduced to poetry that doesn't speak to them.

Allow yourself to release the emotions you have struggled all your life to contain.

There's a part of every living thing that wants to become itself: the tadpole into the frog, the chrysalis into the butterfly, a damaged human being into a whole one.That is spirituality.

There is a comfort in knowing that you don’t have to pretend anymore, that you are going to do everything within your power to heal.

What would people look like if we could see them as they are, soaked in honey, stung and swollen, reckless, pinned against time?

It's impossible to feel good about yourself if you are doing things that you aren't proud of. . . . It's essential that you . . . [do] things you can respect and admire.

I live in Santa Cruz. I moved here in 1974 and couldn't leave.

Everyone has the right to tell the truth about her own life.

Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.

So much inspires me. People living their lives with courage, beauty of all kinds, nature in all its aspects, people I love and people I hardly know, and, of course, other poets.

Poetry is the most intimate of all writing. I want to speak first from me to myself and then from me to you.

Whatever has befallen you was not meant to escape you, and whatever has escaped you was not meant to befall you.

That which I cannot hold is that which I can treasure the most because it affords me no burden other than to enjoy it.

It's a rotten job, but somebody's got to do it.

The enemies of the future are always the very nicest people.

Poetry is a slipknot tightened around a time-beat of one thought, two thoughts, and a last interweaving thought there is not yet a number for.

The whole existence of man is a ceaseless duel between the forces of life and death.

He who wishes to be benevolent will not be rich.

I sometimes think that there is nothing but time, that what you see and what you feel is what time looks like at that moment.

Change doesn’t happen overnight. It starts with the desire, then one small step in the right direction.

If there is a time of judgment, instead of theological or institutional litmus tests, the only question asked about our life and spirituality will be "Did you love with abandonment?"