Nobody hates us as ourselves. In their minds we're not human... They don't hate us because we did something or said something. They make us stand for an evil they invent and then they want to kill it in us.

The mind wraps itself around a poem. It is almost sensual, particularly if you work on a computer. You can turn the poem round and about and upside down, dancing with it a kind of bolero of two snakes twisting and coiling, until the poem has found its right and proper shape.

We must shine with hope, stained glass windows that shape light into icons, glow like lanterns borne before a procession. Who can bear hope back into the world but us.

If I observe my cats carefully, it is partly because I observe everyone I deal with as carefully as I can and partly because they amuse and entertain me. They are an important part of the fabric of my daily life.

Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.

A strong woman is a woman at work, cleaning out the cesspool of the ages, and while she shovels, she talks about how she doesn't mind crying, it opens the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up develops the stomach muscles, and she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.

We may be losing the ability to understand animals who are not pets or horses. We have less contact with them. We don't (most of us) tend to know even cows and pigs, let alone bears or wolverines or red tailed hawks.