I think many people love poetry who don't know they love it. People are sometimes afraid of poetry, or they've been introduced to poetry that doesn't speak to them.

There's a part of every living thing that wants to become itself: the tadpole into the frog, the chrysalis into the butterfly, a damaged human being into a whole one.That is spirituality.

It's impossible to feel good about yourself if you are doing things that you aren't proud of. . . . It's essential that you . . . [do] things you can respect and admire.

No matter how many vitamins you take, how much Pilates, you'll lose your keys, your hair and your memory.

to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.

Visualizing how you want to be is [an] effective way to move toward your goal.

I live in Santa Cruz. I moved here in 1974 and couldn't leave.