Teachers at all levels encourage the idea that you have to talk about things in order to understand them, because they wouldn't have jobs, otherwise. But it's phony, you know.

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.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free

To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.

The Canadian run can be no different, at least in terms of actual running.

We are assumed to be rather hopeless - swallowed up by incorrect notions, divorced from the original genius with which we are born, lost within days of living this distracting life.

There will be but few people who, when at a loss for topics of conversation, will not reveal the more secret affairs of their friends.

The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th.

No matter how much love is there, these aren't two people who are actually good for each other. They don't help each other grow. They stifle each other's growth.

I make it a point to go home every weekend so I can meet with Georgians and hear from them directly.

A charming woman is a busy woman.

The maxims of men reveal their characters.