I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Who knows what will happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.

In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it.

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

Don't we all die someday and someday comes all too soon? What will you do with your own wild, glorious chance at this thing we call life.

I don't know lots of things but I know this: next year when spring flows over the starting point I'll think I'm going to drown in the shimmering miles of it.

We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy. I spent a great deal of time in my younger years just writing and reading, walking around the woods in Ohio, where I grew up.