I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second. And in America, we have it backwards.

... to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers.

Look, hasn't my body already felt like the body of a flower?

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

Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving

The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things, I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, frog voice; now, he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever from, One or Two Things

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.