Affliction is more apt to suffocate the imagination than to stimulate it.

Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appears, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds - the invisible shared out in endless abundance.

You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so venerable a neighbor, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night.

Both art and faith are dependent on imagination; both are ventures into the unknown.

I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer.

Teachers at all levels encourage the idea that you have to talk about things in order to understand them, because they wouldn't have jobs, otherwise. But it's phony, you know.

In city, in suburb, in forest, no way to stretch out the arms - so if you would grow, go straight up or deep down.