“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.”

Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

I always entertain great hopes.

There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can’t move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.

Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint.

You’ve got to love what’s loveable and hate what’s hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.

Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.

Many lovers have been divorced By having what is free enforced.

Hope is not found in a way out but a way through.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.

We dance around in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.

If you’re looking for something to be brave about, consider fine arts.

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.

The prediction that glaciers will be gone from Glacier National Park has been moved up by 10 years to 2020, the same year it’s predicted the Arctic Sea will be ice-free in the summer.

A well-frog cannot imagine the ocean, nor can a summer insect conceive of ice. How then can a scholar understand the Tao? He is restricted by his own learning.

I’ve closed my heart down, so many seasons. I didn’t want to hurt again, I didn’t want to try, so I turned myself to ice and stone, said I don’t need anyone, and nobody else would ever make me cry.

I’d love to do a noir. I think Steve McQueen is so cool. But a classic film is a classic film, and perhaps the fantasy of being those characters should be left alone. You’re treading on very thin ice.

When I get a chance to play golf or go on a boat with good people, take the boat out and put some lobsters on the grill, get the ice-cold beer and the cigars – that’s heaven here on earth.

That feeling when you’re so cold you’d give anything to be warm – I’ve had it before, literally huddled around a candle flame on an ice sheet.

I believe tears are holy, because they show us that the ice of our heart is melting.

A Hot Fudge Sundae and a trashy novel is my idea of heaven.