No apology is equal to the task set before it.

You don't have to see eye-to-eye to walk hand-in-hand. You just have to want to go in the same direction.

Progress occurs one apology at a time.

Apology sends the clearest signal that we have the strength of character to reconcile ourselves with the truth.

An effective apology contains within it the answer to the question, "How am I to be held accountable?"

An effective apology focuses more on compassion for the victim than redemption for the offender.

Apologies have more power than most of us realize to restore strained relationships, free us from vengeful impulses, and create possibilities for growth.

Apology is both transactional, in that it restores what has been broken to what it was before, and transformational, in that it creates opportunities that didn't exist before.

When I accept an apology it means that the part in me that honors our relationship honors the part in you that honors our relationship.

You can't talk your way out of a situation you acted you way into.

Accepting the apology signals the acknowledgment of a need to move forward, but not necessarily together.

Poetry is an act of love. Without love life is impossible. Without poetry love has no exuberance.

As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a confusion, or a freedom.

When an individual is raped in this country, more than 90 percent of the time the rapist gets away with the crime.

Acceptance is going to a restaurant where the salad's not great, but the steak is fine.

The laws that forbid the carrying of arms... serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

If we're in some sort of Hobbesian state of nature, where you just want a strong man who has no compassion Donald Trump is going to do a little better. So, we will figure out what game we're playing.

I've done a lot of things in a business where you're lucky to stay alive, so when the time comes, I'll be happy to pass my knowledge along and help someone else.

Cats on the bandstand, give them each a big hand, anyone who sweats like that must be all right.

Writing was my first occupation, begun at age 23.

If a preacher tells you how God says you are, I don't see how you can say that's bad preaching.