“Everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place.”

Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.

I rarely think of poetry as something I make happen; it is more accurate to say that it happens to me. Like a summer storm, a house afire, or the coincidence of both on the same day.

I concentrate on character, theme, language, structure, voice. It actually surprises me that no matter what I write, people declare it “intently political.” I’m just writing about the world I know, as it is. Wounds and griefs included.

People love to read about sins and errors, but not their own.

Eaters must understand, how we eat determines how the world is used.

Once you start cooking, one thing leads to another. A new recipe is as exciting as a blind date. A new ingredient, heaven help me, is an intoxicating affair.

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

Thanks for this day, for all birds safe in their nests, for whatever this is, for life.

Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed.

There are days when I am envious of my hens: when I hunger for a purpose as perfect and sure as a single daily egg.

We agreed with him in principal – we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.

Forgive me, O Heavenly Father, according to the multitude of Thy mercies. I have lusted in my heart to break a man’s skull and scatter the stench of his brains across several people’s back yards.

We’re animals. We’re born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.

I never think that anything I’m writing is bluntly political in any way. I’m not going for commentary.

Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes

Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers!

The first and most imperative necessity in war is money, for money means everything else — men, guns, ammunition.

Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

Everything happens for a reason and that reason is there to assist me.

No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.

First of all a natural talent is required; for when Nature opposes, everything else is in vain; but when Nature leads the way to what is most excellent, instruction in the art takes place.

If you grow yourself to become a successful person, in strength of character and mind, you will naturally be successful in anything and everything you do.

Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.

Family is at the heart of everything I do.