“[Marianne Moore] once remarked, after a visit to her brother and his family, that the state of being married and having children had one enormous advantage: "One never has to worry about whether one is doing the right thing or not. There isn't time. One is always having to go to the market or drive the children somewhere. There isn't time to wonder 'Is this right or isn't it?”

“The art of losing isn't hard to master;so many things seem filled with the intentto be lost that their loss is no disaster.Lose something every day. Accept the flusterof lost door keys, the hour badly spent.The art of losing isn't hard to master.Then practice losing farther, losing faster:places, and names, and where it was you meantto travel. None of these will bring disaster.I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, ornext-to-last, of three loved houses went.The art of losing isn't hard to master.I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gestureI love) I shan't have lied. It's evidentthe art of losing's not too hard to masterthough it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.”

“The art of losing isn't hard to master.”

“Being a poet is one of the unhealthier jobs--no regular hours, so many temptations!”

“If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one—and the same goes for paintings. ”

“The moon in the bureau mirrorlooks out a million miles(and perhaps with pride, at herself,but she never, never smiles)far and away beyond sleep, orperhaps she's a daytime sleeper.By the Universe deserted,she'd tell it to go to hell,and she'd find a body of water,or a mirror, on which to dwell.So wrap up care in a cobweband drop it down the wellinto that world invertedwhere left is always right,where the shadows are really the body,where we stay awake all night,where the heavens are shallow as the seais now deep, and you love me.”

“How can I remember a world that isn't mine? One that isn't the one I wake up in every day now?”