“European children starved and watched their parents scheme and die. Here we grew up with toy whips. Early warning against our future leaders, the war babies.”

I don’t even hate books anymore.

The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.

When passion dies friendship hovers round our flesh like flies.

There is a crack in everything.

The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.

Poetry is a verdict, not an occupation.

We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made. In love we disappear.

You wanted to be the Superman who was never Clark Kent.

Ordinary eternal machinery, like the grinding of the stars.

A young nurse is standing close behind me wondering whether she is being drawn by my power or her charity.

After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover.

A kite is a victim you are sure of. You love it because it pulls.

You live your life as if it’s real, a thousand kisses deep.

To kiss her there was to intrude into something private and skeletal, like a turtle’s shoulder.

How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?

Your faith was strong, but you needed proof.

There is a world up ahead where people are not targeted for beliefs or bodies, where peace isn’t a fantasy but reality. Build the world you hope your children will see.

See, my children, a person who is in a state of sin is always sad. Whatever he does, he is weary and disgusted with every thing; while he who is at peace with God is always happy, always joyous. . . Oh, beautiful life! Oh, beautiful death!

As a woman, especially when you have children, one gets so good at soldiering on – almost too good.

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.

We must teach our children to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons.

We’re all a nation that believes we’re children of the same god.

If we call ourselves children of God, then others are also children of God.

I wouldn’t be a part of anything that had acts of violence toward children. I don’t think I would do a horror film, either. That just doesn’t sit well on my soul.