Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

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

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response.

There is only one question: / how to love this world.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Attention without feeling is only a report.

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