“The first steps toward stewardship are awareness, appreciation, and the selfish desire to have the things around for our kids to see. Presumably the unselfish motives will follow as we wise up.”

It’s a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can’t begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.

She is inhumanly alone. And then, all at once, she isn’t.

I prefer to remain anomalous.

To think is not always to see.

There are some who’d hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think’s been too lucky.

A good title holds magic, some cognitive dissonance, a little grit between the teeth, but above all it is the jumping-off place into wonder.

Write a nonfiction book, and be prepared for the legion of readers who are going to doubt your fact. But write a novel, and get ready for the world to assume every word is true.

This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.

The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don’t know.

Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need

Sadness is more or less like a head cold – with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.

there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I’m concerned that’s like accusing a dog of having a bark!

Poetry feels like a country I visit without a passport, where I look around furtively, grab hold of something precious, and try to smuggle it back across the border. Any poem I get written down feels like contraband to me.

Anybody can get worked up, if they have the intention. It’s peacefulness that is hard to come by on purpose.

I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.

Appreciate what you’ve got and follow your heart and you’re all good. Don’t over-complicate things.

Appreciate again and again, freshly and naively the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy, however stable these experiences may have become to others.

You’re an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I’m an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I’m in an ideal position to appreciate it.

Be nice to everyone, always smile, and appreciate things because it could all be gone tomorrow.

A person does not struggle except for what he loves and only loves what is free of appreciation and respect.

He didn’t appreciate my light until he knew how dark it can get after the sun has set.

The art to breathe and smile despite the pressure of anxiety, takes courage and power, keep appreciating yourself.

He’s fully committed to appreciating his body with all its flaws and imperfections, more and more every day.