In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that.

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"]

It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning - it'll be gone.

I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.

I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... almost involuntary in my life.

I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things.

Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.