“Rhythm. Life is full of it; words should have it, too. But you have to train your ear. Listen to the waves on a quiet night; youll pick up the cadence. Look at the patterns the wind makes in dry sa...”

“Youre thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isnt at all. Failure is a teacher a harsh one, perhaps, but the best. You say you have a desk full of rejected manuscripts? Thats great! E...”

“The trouble with if only is that it doesnt change anything. It keeps the person facing the wrong way backward instead of forward. It wastes time. In the end, if you let it become a habit, it can b...”

“Some criticism, no doubt, is constructive, but too much is a subtle poison.”

“Its the person who likes to pat dogs to whom dogs come for pats.”

“Lets not be too harsh where poets are concerned. They have to live in no-mans-land, halfway between dreams and reality.”

“There are two types of seeds in the mind: those that create anger, fear, frustration, jealousy, hatred and those that create love, compassion, equanimity and joy. Spirituality is germination and sp...”

“My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.These, by contrast, are...”

“If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.”

“I was smiling yesterday,I am smiling today and I will smile tomorrow.Simply because life is too short to cry for anything.”

“You stay safe, You love. You survive. You laugh and cry and struggle and sometimes you fail and sometimes you succeed. You Push.”

“I cut myself because you wouldn't let me cry.I cried because you wouldn't let me speak.I spoke because you wouldn't let me shine.I shone because I thought you loved me...”

“Of course it would be hard. But I remembered what my nurseryman grandfather used to say when I didnt want to go to school: half the work in the world was done by people who didnt feel so good today.”

“I've never minded it," he went on. "Being lost, that is. I had always thought one could not truly be lost if one knew one's own heart. But I fear I may be lost without knowing yours.”

“There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison”