it was dawning on me how uphill a poet's path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I'd choose to be happy.

A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.

Sure the world breeds monsters, but kindness grows just as wild.

Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards.

Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.

The words and sentences you take into your body from books are no less sacred and healing than communion. Surely at least one such person lives in your zip code.

In my godless household, poems were the closest we came to sacred speech -- the only prayers said.

I find a great deal of comfort and care in my faith and prayer. I'd sooner do without air than prayer.

When I got sober, I thought giving up was saying goodbye to all the fun and all the sparkle, and it turned out to be just the opposite. That's when the sparkle started for me.

I'm doomed to act like myself, even when it's inconvenient!

I believe in God, but even if you don't, you can believe in a self, the person who is innately who you are. Once you fully become that person, then everything you do will be blessed.

not knowing what I needed to do or where I needed to go, I knew all the same that I was going in the right direction.

Do all the good you can and make as little fuss about it as possible.

They best pass over the world who trip over it quickly; for it is but a bog. If we stop, we sink.

We should try to introduce our children to science today as a rebellion against poverty and ugliness and militarism and economic injustice.

The trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true.

The true poet is called to take in the splendor of the world and for that reason will always be inclined to praise rather than tofind fault.

Too much thinking, not enough feeling.

Maybe ever'body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.

Life is not lived in hours, days, or years, but in moments.

Make enough mole hills, and eventually you will build a mountain.