Writing is so hard. And then, sometimes, it is so bewilderingly easy.

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

We only store in memory images of value. To write about one's life is to live it twice, and the second time is both spiritual and historical.

Refuse to write your life and you have no life.

These days it seems the lyric impulse, so seemingly fragile, comes in for a lot of abuse-or simply a lot of mistrust. What's it for, anyway, in this hard-edged, worried world? Into this cultural uncertainty Gregory Orr's spirited meditation on the surprisingly tensile strength of poetry in the face of profound suffering and grief presents a welcome fresh view of the ancient human instinct to cry out and to praise.

The paradox: there can be no pilgrimage without a destination, but the destination is also not the real point of the endeavor. Not the destination, but the willingness to wander in pursuit characterizes pilgrimage. Willingness: to hear the tales along the way, to make the casual choices of travel, to acquiesce even to boredom. That's pilgrimage -- a mind full of journey.

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