Routine is not a prison, but the way into freedom from time.

When one's not writing poems - and I'm not at the moment - you wonder how you ever did it. It's like another country you can't reach.

I tell the gods are still alive / And they are not consoling.

One of the good elements of old age is that we no longer have to prove anything, to ourselves or to anyone else. We are what we are.

The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.

So this was fame at last! Nothing but a vast debt to be paid to the world in energy, blood, and time.