“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”

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

“Ask MeSome time when the river is ice ask memistakes I have made. Ask me whetherwhat I have done is my life. Othershave come in their slow way intomy thought, and some have tried to helpor to hurt: ask me what differencetheir strongest love or hate has made.I will listen to what you say.You and I can turn and lookat the silent river and wait. We knowthe current is there, hidden; and thereare comings and goings from miles awaythat hold the stillness exactly before us.What the river says, that is what I say.”

“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.”

“A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.”

“A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.”

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