All of life like a series of tableaux, and in the living we missed so much, hid so much, left so much undone and unsaid.

People who are knowledgeable about poetry sometimes discuss it in that knowing, rather hateful way in which oenophiles talk about wine: robust, delicate, muscular. This has nothing to do with how most of us experience it, the heart coming around the corner and unexpectedly running into the mind. Of all the words that have stuck to the ribs of my soul, poetry has been the most filling.

America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.

All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.

Children should have enough freedom to be themselves - once they've learned the rules.

It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit.

Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life. And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.