My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.

I wanted him [my father] to cherish and approve of me, not as he had when I was a child, but as the woman I was, who had her own mind and had made her own choices.

Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.

Art and literature have given so many people the relief of feeling connected - pulled us out of isolation. It has let us know that somebody else breathed and dreamed and had sex and loved and raged and knew loneliness the way we do.

We move but our words stand become responsible for more than we intended and this is verbal privilege

A language is a map of our failures

The words are purposes./The words are maps./I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail.