... the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores.

I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.

And now my old dog is dead, and another I had after him, and my parents are dead, and that first world, that old house, is sold and lost, and the books I gathered there lost, or sold- but more books bought, and in another place, board by board and stone by stone, like a house, a true life built, and all because I was steadfast about one or two things: loving foxes, and poems, the blank piece of paper, and my own energy- and mostly the shimmering shoulders of the world that shrug carelessly over the fate of any individual that they may, the better, keep the Niles and Amazons flowing.

... the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores.

I know many lives worth living.

You must not ever stop being whimsical.

Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents.