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

We store in memory only images of value. The value may be lost over the passage of time, but that's the implacable judgment of feeling.

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.

The cold was our pride, the snow was our beauty. It fell and fell, lacing day and night together in a milky haze, making everything quieter as it fell, so that winter seemed to partake of religion in a way no other season did, hushed, solemn.

Silence was the first prayer I learned to trust.

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.

We do not, after all, simply have experience; we are entrusted with it. We must do something--make something--with it. A story, we sense is the only possible habitation for the burden of our witnessing.