“And now here we are together, in Chicago, two travelers, one.”

“Probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other. The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement.”

“I think, writing-wise, I am probably more of a quilter than a weaver because I just get a little scrap here and a little scrap there and sew them together.”

“One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.”

“[[diving into the wreck]]First having read the book of myths,and loaded the camera,and checked the edge of the knife-blade[...]And now: it is easy to forgetwhat I came foramong so many who have alwayslived here...[...]the thing I came for:the wreck and not the story of the wreckthe thing itself and not the myththe drowned face always staringtoward the sunthe evidence of damageworn by salt and away into this threadbare beautythe ribs of the disastercurving their assertionamong the tentative haunters.[...]We are, I am, you areby cowardice or couragethe one who find our wayback to this scenecarrying a knife, a cameraa book of mythsin whichour names do not appear.”

“in the nineteenth year and the eleventh monthspeak your tattered Kaddish for all suicides:Praise to life though it crumbled in like a tunnelon ones we knew and lovedPraise to life though its windows blew shuton the breathing-room of ones we knew and lovedPraise to life though ones we knew and lovedloved it badly, too well, and not enoughPraise to life though it tightened like a knoton the hearts of ones we thought we knew loved usPraise to life giving room and reasonto ones we knew and loved who felt unpraisable.Praise to them, how they loved it, when they could.”

“For now, poetry has the capacity - in its own ways and by its own means - to remind us of something we are forbidden to see.”