We all have angels guiding us...They look after us. They heal us, touch us, comfort us with invisible warm hands...What will bring their help? Asking. Giving thanks.

We write to understand our deepest secrets to ourselves, to understand. We write in an outpouring of love. We write in secret, either for publication or for a journal no one will see, or we write poems to be privately printed for the eyes of friends alone - this is not our choice. The urge is to create. The outcome belongs to God.

I think our animals are angels, earth-angels, pointing out for us the steadfast path of love, loyalty, optimism, faith, joy, hope. They teach us everything important about life.

When I'm having trouble I write by hand. There is some connection between the mind and the fingers that draws out words.

Prayer is a law of the universe, like gravity. You don't even have to believe in God to ask.

I have a lion inside me, and I had to feed it words every few days; when I don't, it begins to eat me instead.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was thirty-nine when she began Uncle Tom's Cabin. She had given birth to seven children and seen one die. She wrote her book to be serialized in an abolitionist newspaper. Much of it she composed on the kitchen table in between the cooking, mending, tending to her house.