When death comes…. I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what it’s going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body as a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. [from the poem "When Death Comes"]

Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.

I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.

There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay.

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.

I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery.