“He was a big talker, someone who liked words for words' sake, the sound of them, the way you can pile them up in your mouth and make a poem if you speill them out the right way.p92”

“It's a long haul bringing up our children to be good; you have to keep doing that — bring them up — and that means bringing things up with them: Asking, telling, sounding them out, sounding off yourself — finding, through experience, your own words, your own way of putting them together. You have to learn where you stand, and make sure your kids learn [where you stand], understand why, and soon, you hope, they'll be standing there beside you, with you.”

“You sound like a control freak." The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. "Oh, I exercise control in all things, Miss Steele," he says without a trace of humor in his smile.”

“No one wants to read poetry. You have to make it impossible for them to put the poem down--impossible for them to stop reading it, word after word. You have to keep them from closing the book.”

“You said five little words to someone--How can I help you?--and it was as if you'd mortgaged your soul out to them.”

“If you put the words on a page and you believe in them, then it’s a poem.”