“When I began to be published, people got the idea that I should ‘teach writing,’ which I have no idea how to do and don’t really believe in.”

Love dares the self to leave itself behind, to enter into poverty.

I never had much education in English poetry as such.

Madness and witchery as well as bestiality are conditions commonly associated with the use of the female voice in public.

He stood against the wind and let it peel him clean.

Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.

A man moves through time. It means nothing except that, like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.

One of the principle qualities of pain is that it demands an explanation.

Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.

Consider incompleteness as a verb.

Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.

I am a drop of gold he would say I am molten matter returned from the core of earth to tell you interior things.

You doubt God? Well more to the point I credit God with the good sense to doubt me. What is mortality after all but divine doubt flashing over us? For an instant God suspends assent and poof! we disappear.

Simply do something else and return to it later to find the problem wasn’t a problem at all. Ruptures almost always lead to a stronger project.

To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.

Each night about this time he puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing.

Comfortable means gradually more and more flattened down, more and more blunt – less and less sharp and biting into you.

Jesus associated with the outcasts; he spoke with them, touched them, ate with them, loved them.

Clear moments are so short. There is much more darkness.

Words have a longer life than deeds.

It only makes sense to ask God for guidance in the context of a life committed to “seeking first the kingdom.”

When the light comes into a room, we do not have to say, “Now what are we going to do about the darkness?” It’s gone!

Counting obligations under Medicare and Social Security.

A leader’s responsibility is to cause a vision and mission to have tangible results in the real world.

And if they’re not in existence, if this was yet another fabrication by the president, he needs to come clean about it.