“I gather up my loves, and keep them all warm”

“Solitary is our place, the castle in the sea,And I muse on those I have loved, and on those who have loved me.”

“The Lost TribeHow long, how long must I regret? I never found my people yet; I go about, but cannot find The blood-relations of the mindThrough my little sphere I range, And though I wither do not change; Must not change a jot, lest they Should not know me on my way.Sometimes I think when I am dead They will come about my bed, For my people well do know When to come and when to go.I know not why I am alone, Nor where my wandering tribe is gone, But be they few, or be they far, Would I were where my people are!”

“Growing up, I was utterly oblivious to the fact that Mom was teaching me all that. But I was instantly aware of her final lesson, which was hidden in her notes and leters. As I read them I began to understand that in the end you are the only one who can make yourself happy. More important, Mom showed me that it is never too late to find out how to do it.”

“Books were my hobby, even as a child,' he told me. 'I read about every book in Milkwaukee Public Library before I was 15...Some of the books I didn't understand- but I read them just the same. I believed, you see, that my life work would be teaching, so I wanted to learning everything I could about every possible subject.”

“You couldn’t love someone the way he had loved her and then be turned off them in five minutes by nothing more than lies and daydreams. Could you? Could you?”

“Stone: Yes, we are everything, every experience we've ever had, and in some of us, a lot of it translates and makes patterns, poems. But, my God, we don't even began to touch upon it. There's an enormous amount, but we can touch such a little.Interviewer: That's true, just a very small portion.Stone: Very small. I think that's one of the things that our minds do; they sort out, somehow, often, and make patterns of significant things to us. And I think our minds do that for us in the dark, and then they offer them back in poems. I think your mind makes up your poem before you get it. You know, you receive the poem from your mind, you know you do. It takes a multitude of experiences, and all this language, and all this sound, and puts it together in these patterns that are significant to you and gives it back to you.”