I’m not really the sacrificing type.

Life and stories are alike in one way: They are full of hollows. The king and queen have no children: They have a child hollow. The girl has a wicked stepmother: She has a mother hollow. In a story, a baby comes along to fill the child hollow. But in life, the hollows continue empty.

I don't mean to be ungrateful but if someone's out there answering prayers, mine's not at the top of the list

A poem doesn’t come out and tell you what it has to say. It circles back on itself, eating its own tail and making you guess what it means.

It's one thing to keep secrets. It's quite another to lie.

Thoughts are strange creatures. They lead you from one thing to another. Sometimes you don’t know how you got from one to the next.

The beach has a language of its own, with its undulating ribbons of silt, the imponderable hieroglyphs of bird tracks. The receding waves catch on innumerable holes in the sand. Bubbles form and fade. A new language, with a new alphabet.