Ask Me Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made. I will listen to what you say. You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden; and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.

Language can do what it can’t say.

A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.

It is this impulse to change the quality of experience that I recognize as central to creation. . . . Out of all that could be done, you choose one thing. What that one thing is, nothing else can tell you--you come at it over unmarked snow.

An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.

What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.

There are so many things admirable people do not understand.