“I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.”

I tried the key in all the doors, even though he said he didn’t recognize it. It’s not that I didn’t trust him, becuase I did. It’s that at the end of my search I wanted to be able to say: I don’t know how I could have tried harder.

Just to be a functioning adult in the world, we develop all of these layers of protection. When we see homeless people, we don’t cry, even though homeless people probably deserve our tears – you know, it’s a horrible thing.

Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled. Each second was two hundred yards, to be walked, crawled. You couldn’t see the next hour, it was so far in the distance. Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.

I wasn’t having second thoughts, but I was having thoughts.

I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you.

Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.

I never confused what I had with what I was.

Not responding is a response – we are equally responsible for what we don’t do.

The world is a big place,” he said, “but so is the inside of an apartment!

I was more alone than if I had been alone.

This is love, she thought, isn’t it? When you notice someone’s absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?

I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.

I dreamt four nights ago of clock hands descending from the universe like rain, of the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and insects, of a love that never withdrew. It was not the feeling of completeness that I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.

I’d rather somebody hate what I do than be indifferent to it.

Also, I designed a pretty fascinating bracelet, where you put a rubber band around your favorite book of poems for a year, and then you take it off and wear it.

I felt shame for living in a nation of unprecedented prosperity-a nation that spends a smaller percentage of income on food than any other civilization has in human history-but in the name of affordability treats the animals it eats with cruelty so extreme it would be illegal if inflicted on a dog.

Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.

It’s so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.

The blank page gives us the right to dream.

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

I advance all of my canvas at one time.

I am so tired of waking to the blank canvas of morning and realizing it won’t be painted with you.

I love to go down to the schoolyard and watch all the little children jump up and down and run around yelling and screaming. They don’t know I’m only using blanks.

I like Stallone, because he writes. He sits down with a blank page and comes up with another Rambo movie. That isn’t very easy for anybody. He’s made it successful on top of that.