Work is style, and there is style without thought; not in theory, only in fact. When I take a sentence in my hand, raise it to the light, rub my hand across it, disjoin it, put it back together again with a comma added, raising the pitch in the front part; when I rub the grain of it, comb the fur of it, re-assemble the bones of it, I am making something that carries with it the sound of a voice, the firmness of a hand. Maybe little more.

Each year the big garden grew smaller and Jane - who grew flowers by choice, not corn or stringbeans - worked at the vegetables more than I did. Each winter I dreamed crops, dreamed marvels of canning . . . and each summer I largely failed. Shamefaced, I planted no garden at all.

You think that their dying is the worst thing that could happen. Then they stay dead.

Words seem like drops of water in a stream that has its own wholeness and its own motion.

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

The greatest kindness would put a bullet in his bright eye.

To grow old is to lose everything.