When you change the way you look at a thing, the thing itself changes...By mastering feelings, she had come to understand the meaning of discipline and its reward: freedom and power.

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

For me a true poem is on the way when I begin to be haunted, when it seems as if I were being asked an inescapable question by an angel with whom I must wrestle to get at the answer.

The hardest thing we are asked to do in this world is to remain aware of suffering, suffering about which we can do nothing.

We only keep what we lose.

Family life! The United Nations is child's play compared to the tugs and splits and need to understand and forgive in any family.

When I am alone the flowers are really seen; I can pay attention to them. They are felt as presences. Without them I would die...they change before my eyes. They live and die in a few days; they keep me closely in touch with the process, with growth, and also with dying. I am floated on their moments.