We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms of our illness and the result of our failures in love.

To share poetry is one of the most intimate acts of friendship possible.

I hope that I will never forget the salvific power of joyful laughter.

Integrity, like humility, is a quality which vanishes the moment we are conscious of it in ourselves. We see it only in others.

Stories have a richness that goes way beyond fact. My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is listen to her book. It might take you where you don't expect to go.

When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both things. But an acceptance of contradiction is no excuse for fuzzy thinking. We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledge that they cannot take use all the way.

Sometimes when we have to speak suddenly we come closer to the truth than when we have time to think.