1. “A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.”
2. "Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is."
3. “Follow your curiosity and passion. What fascinates you will probably fascinate others. But even if it doesn't, you will have devoted your life to what you love.”
4. ”I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”
5. "In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messanger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.
In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,
I will honor all life -
wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell --on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars."
6. “It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.”
7. “Language is steeped in metaphors of touch. We call our emotions feelings, and we care most deeply when something touches us. Problems can be thorny, ticklish, sticky, or need to be handled with kid gloves. Touchy people, especially if they're coarse, really get on our nerves. Noli me tangere, legal Latin for don't meddle or interfere, translates literally as Don't touch me, and it was what Christ said to Mary Magdalen after the Resurrection.”
8. “Life began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.”
9. “Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.”
10. ”Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.”
11. “There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses.”
12. “We live on the leash of our senses.”
