Sometimes you have to be less ashamed about writing a bad poem than you would be about being silent.

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.

If you're imaginatively responsible to the place you live in, you understand the watershed.

The birds are silent in the woods. / Just wait: soon enough / You will be quiet too

Imagination runs through the places where we live like water. We need both things-a living knowledge of the land and a live imagination of it and our place in it- if we are going to preserve it.

Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free.

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.

For there is nothing like travel to heal a broken heart.

Silent people are those who have too much to say

But no man's a hero to himself.

I'm bugged because I can't believe I can't speak every language there is. But I feel I can when I sit and am with somebody, and I can dance for them. Because dance is dialogue without language.

Be really, really true to yourself. That to me, has been key to me in understanding how I want to live the second half of my life.

In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike.

I'm blessed to have cool roles in these big movies.

I've always said, 'I am a selector, I am not defector' - the first few phrases in English I learned. I said I hate 'defector'; something defective about the people. It's a bad word.

I often felt like I was walking around with this Scarlet Letter stitched to my chest from the way that people treated me.