Poetry offers a way of understanding and expressing existence that is fundamentally different from conceptual thought.

There are some truths about life that can be expressed only as stories, or songs, or images. Art delights, instructs, consoles. It educates our emotions.

Money. You don't know where it's been, but you put it where your mouth is. And it talks!

The new year always brings us what we want Simply by bringing us along—to see A calendar with every day uncrossed, A field of snow without a single footprint.

Everyone enjoys stories of double lives and secret identities. Children have Superman; intellectuals have Wallace Stevens.

Teach us the names of what we have destroyed.

My blessed California, you are so wise. You render death abstract, efficient, clean. Your afterlife is only real estate, And in his kingdom Death must stay unseen.

Poetry is not a creed or dogma. It is a special way of speaking and listening.

What we conceal Is always more than what we dare confide. Think of the letters that we write our dead.

Being so deeply rooted in one place and culture allows a genuine writer to experiment wildly with the material without ever losing touch with its essence.

To speak from a particular place and time is not provincialism but part of a writer's identity.

If we subject religious claims to a lesser degree of scrutiny, we should not be surprised if religious people subject us to a greater degree of servitude.

If a storyteller worried about the facts - my dear Lucian, how could he ever get at the truth?

ADAGE, n. Boned wisdom for weak teeth.

Every time you find yourself becoming angry, jealous or frustrated, stop and think the opposite thought.

The most important key to successful investing can be summed up in just two words-asset allocation.

Power is the goal of religion in general.

I made some friends for life, the way I usually make them. Any jackass can be pleasant company, but if people help you when you're at your worst, that's a friend.

You'll never go wrong in doing what is right.

[the best advice about women] was from Robert Evans. The line was in his book, but he told me, "When it comes to a woman's mind, I know nothing."

I've always found the rain very calming.