“You don't hit a child when you want him to stop hitting. You don't yell at a children to get them to stop yelling. Or spit at a child to indicate that he should not spit. Of course, you want children to know how to sympathize with others and to "know how it feels," but you ... have to show them how to act—not how not to act.”

“You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”

“If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”

“When someone's wounded, the first order of business is to stop the bleeding. You can figure out later how best to help them heal.”

“If you get down, all you need to do is act like you're feeling good, and next thing you know, you are.”

“Interviewer: The other day, when we first talked, you said that you felt that, when you were writing, you were often following invisible patterns.Stone: I don't see them so much as hear them, and I know that a poem will happen and later I will look at it, and say: Wow, where did that come from? how did I do that? I didn't set out to do that, but the neural connections are so fast, the body, the self is so slow, (laughs) that you're kind of astonished. It's odd.”

“You want to know how I think art should be taught to children? Take them to a museum and say, 'This is art, and you can't do it.”