You don't learn to write by going through a series of preset writing exercises. You learn to write by grappling with a real subject that truly matters to you.

When students write from experience, they can breathe those specifics into their writing- dialect, odd smells, precise names of plants- that can animate even the most tired and tedious text.

Here's the secret of writing: there is no secret.

Use your notebook to breathe in the world around you.

Good writing happens when human beings follow particular steps to take control of their sentences-to make their words do what they want them to do.

Writing becomes beautiful when it becomes specific, concrete.

The real meaning of a poem is to stop time.

Poems are the 'daredevil' of writing because a poem will say what nobody else wants to say.

Springtimeand I wish I knew you

Beauty that steals the heart is often imperfect, suggests grace and kindness, and inspires tenderness more than it incites lust.

The soul is steady just waiting to be fedand to blossom.

An older author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of his earlier years.

We laugh at that which we cannot bear to face.

Only majorities can expand political rights in America's constitutional society.

If I have any talent at all it's from God, and my mom, who was on Capitol Records also.

Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.

It is not someone's fault if they succeeded, it is someone's fault if they failed.

The summer of 1943 at Exeter was as happy a time as I ever had in my life.

Middle age went by while I was mourning for my lost youth.