When I came into the job, funding for the humanities at the federal level was being drastically cut. This was the high tide of the new Republican Congress.

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.

You can't help it but you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed — so you were a good man just the same.

Change occurs when excuses pivot to execution.

such wanton, wild, and usual slips/ As are companions noted and most known/ To youth and liberty.

Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.

There is nothing unpremeditated, nothing neglected by God. His unsleeping eye beholds all things.

In all the world, you are what I love the most.

Democrats don't represent the taxpayers, they represent the tax-consumers.

I have to constantly tell my personnel staff, 'Hey guys, we're still a good staff even though we're allowing good players to go play for other people,'

If I did not have my work, I would not have any life.

A sound like a sound of thunder rolled, And the heart of a nation stirred