There's no word for what Young does, only for what he accomplishes-the capturing of small, daily miracles.

You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake.

Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's.

That's how it is sometimes--God comes to your window, all bright light and black wings, and you're just too tired to open it.

A poem is like a child; at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its own way in the world.

Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question.

Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won’t.

I have always loved too much, or not enough.

We continue to speak, if only in whispers, to something inside us that longs to be named.

Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.

Maybe it's what we don't say/that saves us.

Hope is something God gives us. Hope is...Hope is a bright light on a dark night. If your hope is guiding you into this shore, then this is where you should drop your anchor.

Life is like a Chinese burn.

Morality, when formal, devours.

My kids probably started drinking coffee in their late teens.

In any given age it is only a few extremists who are right.

By seeing the beauty in every face we lift others into their wisest self and increase the chances of hearing a synchronistic message.

I can secretly dance, I think. But no one has seen me so I don't know if that's a fair judgment for me to say.

My advice is to run while you can.

Quality is more than a promise, it's genuine performance.

Well, it may be all right in practice, but it will never work in theory