I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do.

We dropped our troubles into the lap of the storyteller, and they turned into someone else's.

My father was very disappointed by war and fighting. And he thought language could help us out of cycles of revenge and animosity. And so, as a journalist, he always found himself asking lots of questions and trying to gather information. He was always very clear to underscore the fact that Jewish people and Arab people were brother and sister.

I think the job of writing and literature is to encourage each one of us to believe that we're living in a story.

I have always loved the gaps, the spaces between things, as much as the things. I love staring, pondering, mulling, puttering. I love the times when someone or something is late-there's that rich possibility of noticing more, in the meantimePoetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.

Where we live in the world is never one place. Our hearts, those dogged mirrors, keep flashing us moons before we are ready for them.

The writing of Kathleen McGookey shines more brightly than most fine things we feel pleasure to read. Celebrate it!