Writing or making anything-a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake-has self-respect in it. You're working. You're trying. You're not lying down on the ground, having given up.

I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky.

Poets are like steam valves, where the ordinary feelings of ordinary people can escape and be shown.

Take your vitamins. Exercise. Just work to love yourself as much as you can - not more than the people around you but not so much less.

The older I get, the more I see the power of that young woman, my mother.

There is something in me maybe someday to be written; now it is folded, and folded, and folded, like a note in school.

I did not know him, I knew my idea of him.

The older I get, the more I feel.

I have learned to get pleasure from speaking of pain

I didn't have time to sit down and look at the work of a year and choose what to type.

I did not deceive him, he did not deceive me, I did not leave him, he did not leave me, I freed him, he freed me.

I have taken all my good deeds and all my bad deeds, and cast them … in a heap before the Lord, and fled from both, and betaken myself to the Lord Jesus Christ, and in him I have sweet peace!

All right, then, I'll go to hell.

In any business, the more you learn, the more sympathetic you can be to other people's positions.

I'm inspired to keep on when people like what I do.

Consider fully, act decisively.

I don't typically drink coffee.

I admire artists who are ageing and still retaining their edge.

There are illegitimate parents, but I don't believe there are any illegitimate children.

What Turning Forty Means to Me I need to take my pants off as soon as I get home. I didn't used to have to do that. But now I do.

I do not always listen again but if something strikes me, I exploit it.