This early piece of the morning is mine.

Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers. If they arrive at college with literary ambitions, they should be told that everything they have done since their first childhood poems, printed in the school paper, has been preparation for entering a long, long apprenticeship.

When I was twenty I was in love with words, a wordsmith. I didn't know enough to know when people were letting words get in their way. Now I like the words to disappear, like a transparent curtain.

Salt is added to dried rose petals with the perfume and spices, when we store them away in covered jars, the summers of our past.

We were going to leave a mark on the world but instead the world left marks on us.

Faith can reclaim deserts as well as move mountains.

There it was, there it is, the place where during the best time of our lives friendship had its home and happiness its headquarters.