Art is so often better at theology than theology is.

The horrors have made the legend of Mandelstam and are inevitably the lens through which we read his work and life. But if there had been no Stalin and no purge, Mandelstam still would have been a poet of severe emotional and existential extremity.

Nature poets can't walk across the backyard without tripping over an epiphany.

Sometimes God calls a person to unbelief in order that faith may take new forms.

There are dangers for an artist in any academic environment. Academia rewards people who know their own minds and have developed an ironclad confidence in speaking them. That kind of assurance is death for an artist.

I don't think that someone who does not speak the original language can ever expect to produce a real translation.

It's just that different emotions and perceptions demand different frequencies and intensities.