If in your mind it was possible to take a year's sabbatical from work to reassess your life, what would you do and where would you go?

The great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body.

I love the best of all the traditions. My discipline is the take-no-prisoners language of good poetry, but a language that actually frees us from prejudice, no matter what religion or political persuasion they are. I try to create a river-like discourse. The river is not political, it's not on your side or against you. It's an invitation into the onward flow.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation.

There is no house like the house of belonging.

It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods. I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned. If you know despair or can see it in others.

To have a firm persuasion in our work - to feel that what we do is right for ourselves and good for the world at exactly the same time - is one of the great triumphs of human existence.