“Oh, come on, he was twenty-six. And he had poetry on his lips.”

“Although he's slight, he has that wiry strength that seems to come more from will than muscle.”

“I would like The Discovery of Poetry to be a field guide to the natural pleasures of language - a happiness we were born to have.”

“He said he couldn't understand a world 'shameless and cruel enough to divide its people by color when color is in fact the sign of God's artistic genius.”

“Five tender apricots in a blue bowl, a brief and exact promise of things to come.”

“I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew.”

“Always, I liked the infinitive 'to go.' Let's go, let's go. let's really go. 'Andare' was the first verb I learned to conjugate in Italian. 'Andiamo,' let's go, teh sound comes out at a gallop.”