No memoirists writes for long without experiencing an unsettling disbelief about the reliability of memory, a hunch that memory is not, after all, just memory.

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

The golden light of metaphor, which is the intelligence of poetry, was implicit in alchemical study. To change, magically, one substance into another, more valuable one is the ancient function of metaphor, as it was of alchemy.

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.

I could tell you stories-if only stories could tell what I have in me to tell.

The world is full of mystery but it must not be choked with secrets: we must talk to one another.

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.