Anyone who says, “Here’s my address, write me a poem,” deserves something in reply. So I’ll tell you a secret instead: poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes, they are sleeping. They are the shadows drifting across our ceilings the moment before we wake up. What we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them.

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

It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.

I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page.

Later our dreams begin catching fire around the edges, they burn like paper, we wake with our hands full of ash.

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

Read, Read, and then Read some more. Always Read. Find the voices that speak most to YOU. This is your pleasure and blessing, as well as responsibility!