“I would like The Discovery of Poetry to be a field guide to the natural pleasures of language - a happiness we were born to have.”

“Memory is capricious. I can look back and see decadence, old bigots, the constant racial slurs, the bores, the wild cards, the bighearted, the family album of alcoholics, the saints, the old aunt p...”

“A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice. ”

“You never know, of course, when you write a book what its fate will be. Sink out of sight, soar to the sunwho knows. I love this quote from Frances Mayes. It pretty much sums up the Great Unknown o...”

“There are reasons we congregate in these hot spots- to worship beauty and to feel its effects light up the electrolytes in the bloodstream.”

“Images are the pegs holding down memory's billowing tent.”

“What is it about human nature that when we are touched in a way that is life changing we want to share the experience with others. I have to think it is about bringing gifts from spirit back to the...”

“Anthropocentric as [the gardener] may be, he recognizes that he is dependent for his health and survival on many other forms of life, so he is careful to take their interests into account in whatev...”

“In the same way that the picturesque designers were always careful to include some reminder of our mortality in their gardens -- a ruin, sometimes even a dead tree -- the act of leaving parts of th...”

“For the two of us, home isn't a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.”

“The vast and beautiful world is the home we share together.”

“I stood there a long while, staring at that tree. It looked so strongSo beautiful. Hurt right down the middleBut alive and well. Cee touched my shoulderLightly. Frank? Yes? Come on, brother. Let's ...”

“The days go by, through the brief silence of winter, when the sunshine is so still and pure, like iced wine, and the dead leaves gleam brown, and water sounds hoarse in the ravines.”

“Why do we think love is a magician? Because the whole power of magic consists in love. The work of magic is the attraction of one thing by another because of a certain affinity of nature.”

“In 1494, King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy. Within months, his army collapsed and fled. It was routed not by the Italian army but by a microbe. A mysterious new disease spread through sex k...”