You can know an animal - or a person, for that matter - in an instant, really, though your understanding can go on unfolding for years.

Love, I think, is a gateway to the world, not an escape from it.

Even sad stories are company. And perhaps that's why you might read such a chronicle, to look into a companionable darkness that isn't yours.

No such thing, the queen said, as too many sequins.

We long to connect; we fear that if we do, our freedom and individuality will disappear.

One ambition of poetry, certainly, is to create a reverberant silence in its wake, one that means more or differently than the silence that preceded the poem.

The World Will Break Your Heart. Grief might be, in some ways, the long aftermath of love, the internal work of knowing, holding, more fully valuing what we have lost.

What did you think, that joy / was some slight thing?

There are those fortunate hours when the world consents to be made into a poem.

We love disasters that have nothing to do with us

Because the golden egg gleamed in my basket once, though my childhood became an immense sheet of darkening water I was Noah, and I was his ark, and there were two of every animal inside me

God's grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior

Those with dissociative disorders face a big enough battle living as multiples and dealing with past trauma. Like everyone else, they deserve to be heard and recognised, not stigmatised.

Think about it this way: If you had to launch your business in two weeks, what would you cut out?

This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.

If you want to be a good conversationalist, be a good listener. To be interesting, be interested.

A good director creates an environment which gives the actor the encouragement to fly.

There is clearly much left to be done, and whatever else we are going to do, we had better get on with it.

I think that black fiction authors have to work very hard to avoid being typed as seeking only a black audience.

When it's time to stop living, I will certainly make Death my number one choice!

You create yourself in the image you hold in your mind.