Images split the truth in fractions.

You have come to the shore. There are no instructions.

Both art and faith are dependent on imagination; both are ventures into the unknown.

I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer.

Nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living at peace would have.

It's when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart.

Grief is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it.

In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.

Marvelous Truth, confront us at every turn, in every guise.

One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language.

But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.

I didn't realize it until now, but I don't really know anything about them, or what kind of people they are, really. You can't see inside a person's heart.

We cannot measure, what it is we do not know to value.

My pan plays down an unprecedented amount of our national debt.

Some clergymen make a motto, instead of a theme, of their texts.

It's an act of faith to be a writer in a postliterate world.

Violence is a common part of far too many women's lives.

By centering our lives on timeless, unchanging principles, we create a fundamental paradigm of effective living. It is the center that puts all other centers in perspective.

What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.

Art is making something better without knowing what better is until you make it.

The worshipful father and first founder and embellisher of ornate eloquence in our English, I mean Master Geoffrey Chaucer.