Choose the kids. There will be plenty of time later to choose work.

I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all. What I learned from it is that today seems to be the hardest lesson of all. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and to try to give some of it back because I believed in it completely and utterly.

Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.

Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first.

There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of Pound and Whitman as a weight and a sampler, not an Ezra, a Walt, a thing of beauty, a joy forever.

Each instance of sexual harassment has to be judged on its merits. Facts, timing, motives, credibility: all must be considered before we make up our own minds what to believe.

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.