“it was dawning on me how uphill a poet's path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I'd choose to be happy.”

“Mothers particular devils had remained mysterious to me for decades. So had her past. Few born liars ever intentionally embark in truths direction, even those who believe that such a journey might ...”

“Faith is not a feeling, she says. It's a set of actions. By taking the actions, you demonstrate more faith than somebody who actually has experienced the rewards of prayer and so feels hope.”

“If we didn't read people who were bastards, we'd never read anything. Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards.”

“But what if I don't believe in God? It's like they've sat me in front of a mannequin and said, Fall in love with him. You can't will feeling. What Jack says issues from some still, true place that ...”

“Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt.”

“Human communication and literature are all made of words; thus, its hard to overestimate their unbelievable power.”

“Poetry is not a mere expression of a poet's self, but an enchantment, a spell of the muse, the inspiration. Poetry is thus magic and magic is poetry.”

“We're not made to wallow in pleasure. Pleasure is joy's assassin.”

“When Mr. William Faraday sat down to write his memoirs after fifty-eight years of blameless inactivity he found the work of inscribing the history of his life almost as tedious as living it had bee...”

“When I came home, I was asked to put my pictures in a photo exhibit at the Cinematography College ... my pictures won first prize. I began to ask myself what I was doing, and why. A few months afte...”

“One of the ways to discover our toughness and resiliency is to look back at where we come from. (from Amazon description)”