When I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.

Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.

People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.

To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it.

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

What misery to be afraid of death. What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.

What I have done is learn to love and learn to be loved. That didn't come easy.