The materials of true poetry are always humble, absolutely idiosyncratic, the autobiographical tatters that, in gifted hands, are made into the memoir that fits us all.

Prayer as focus is not a way of limiting what can be seen; it is a habit of attention brought to bear on all that is.

Looking repeatedly into the past, you do not necessarily become fascinated with your own life, but rather with the phenomenon of memory.

The future is here, now, and the past is full of actual deeds, real history. Utopias hardly have the meat on their bones to sustain a people in grave times.

In memory each of us is an artist: each of us creates.

I don't write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know.

Fundamentally, [prayer] is a position, a placement of oneself.