Once I witnessed a windstorm so severe two 100-year-old trees were uprooted on the spot. The next day, walking among the wreckage, I found the friable nests of birds, completely intact and unharmed on the ground. That the featherweight survive the massive, that this reversal of fortune takes place among us — that is what haunts me. I don’t know what it means.

There’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. Writers know that. I have never met a writer who does not crave to be alone. We have to be alone to do what we do.

Although all poets aspire to be birds, no bird aspires to be a poet.

the wasting of time is the most personal, most private, most intimate form of conversation with oneself, as well as with another.

My happiness is marred only by my failure to attain it.

If we knew the value of suffering, we would ask for it.

The industrial world destroys nature not because it doesn’t love it but because it is not afraid of it.