“HOUSE Grow high. The devil can’t find you. Grow deep. Buddha can’t find you. Build a house and live there. Gourd creepers will climb over it, their flowers dazzling at midnight. ”

“Love makes you see a place differently, just as you hold differently an object that belongs to someone you love. If you know one landscape well, you will look at all other landscapes differently. And if you learn to love one place, sometimes you can also learn to love another.”

“Publishing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.”

“Man created God in his image: intolerant, sexist, homophobic and violent.”

“God is not interested in your art but, your heart.”

“How do we remain faithful to our own spiritual imagination and not betray what we know in our own bodies? The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy.”

“None of us have to obey instructions. I consider my own existence proof of that. So much of life is cobbled together when plans go awry. That is often where happiness comes from.”

“There are moments of despair that come sometimes, when night sets in and a white fog presses against the windows. Then our house changes its shape, rears up and becomes a place of despair. Then fear and rage run simply–and the thought of Death as a friend. This is the simplest of thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.”

“One says the things which one feels the need to say, and which the other will not understand: one speaks for oneself alone.”

“Even such is Time, that takes in trustOur youth, our joys, our all we have,And pays us but with earth and dust;Who, in the dark and silent grave,When we have wandered all our ways,Shuts up the story of our days.But from this earth, this grave this dust,My God shall raise me up, I trust.- “Even such is Time” from “Petition to Anne of Denmark”

“I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.”

“This quote is often falsely attributed to Mark Twain.”

“The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge.”

“he who is greedy is always in want”

“I am filled time and againwith a heart-aching wonder when I thinkof the fireand frost of memoriesof the everlastingnessof lovethe solace of familyand the power of prayer.”