“I heard a bird congratulating itselfall day for being a jay.Nobody cared. But it was gladall over again, and said so, again.”

“When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone,and the meaning has to go find an author again.- The Trouble With Reading”

“The earth says have a place, be what that placerequires; hear the sound the birds implyand see as deep as ridges go behindeach other.”

“Assurance"You will never be alone, you hear so deep a sound when autumn comes. Yellowpulls across the hills and thrums, or in the silence after lightning before it says its names-and then the clouds' wide-mouthed apologies. You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone. Rain will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon, long aisles-you never heard so deep a sound, moss on rock, and years. You turn your head- that's what the silence meant: you're not alone. The whole wide world pours down.”

“Everyone is born a poet - a person discovering the way words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is: Why did other people stop?”

“I am your own way of looking at things," she said. "When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation”

“. . . On a sandbarsunlight stretches out its limbs, or is ita sycamore, so brazen, so clean and bold?”