Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing.

For most baseball fans, maybe oldest is always best. We love baseball because it seizes and retains the past, like the snowy village inside a glass paperweight.

Opposites are attracted when each one is anxious about its own character.

Today when I begin writing I’m aware: something that I don’t understand drives this engine.

We made in those days tiny identical rooms inside our bodies which the men who uncover our graves will find in a thousand years shining and whole.

Poetry is what I've done my whole life. And every important thing in my life had found itself into poems.

The pleasure we feel, reading a poem, is our assurance of its integrity.