The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees - to learn something by being nothing

Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.

I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage.

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone. When I'm alone I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing. If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.

The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own.

It is what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over and over.

It is no use thinking that writing of poems - the actual writing - can accommodate itself to a social setting, even the most sympathetic social setting of a workshop composed of friends. It cannot. The work improves there and often the will to work gets valuable nourishment and ideas. But, for good reasons, the poem requires of the writer not society or instruction, but a patch of profound and unbroken solitude.