There's just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away.

If it's darkness we're having, let it be extravagant.

If you want a different life, you gotta start doing and learning different things.

The soul's bliss and suffering are bound together.

A poet's job is to find a name for everything: to be a fearless finder of the names of things.

My ear is not working, my poetry ear. I can't write a line that doesn't sound like pots and pans falling out of the cupboard.

Let it come, as it will, and don't be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.

I am the one whose love overcomes you, already with you when you think to call my name.

Everyone longs for love's tense joys and red delights.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoopin the oats, to air in the lunglet evening come.Let it come, as it will, and don'tbe afraid. God does not leave uscomfortless, so let evening come.

Faith is the force of action.

If we cannot live so as to be happy let us at least live so as to deserve it.

Nothing goes perfectly, especially when you're opening a restaurant.

Fall, then figure out what to do on the way down.

We need above all to learn again to believe in the possibility of nobility of spirit in ourselves.

Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.

I believe in acknowledging all breaks, big and small, personal and professional.

Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence. Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle, so do the selves of girls go down in droves.

I don't have all the facts. And I might misremember. As a matter of fact, after I finished Winter Journal, I realized that I'd gotten someone's name wrong.

I like books that are exciting and that make you think about things, as well. I like things that have a twist - like 'Atonement,' which I haven't read obviously, as I'm a bit young.