“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.”

“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...”

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that youve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you sa...”

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there i...”

“This is going to sound crazy, but... from the moment I first set eyes on you I haven't been able to stop thinking about you.”

“When George spotted the pinup girl of his fondest fantasies across that cheesy bar, he had no idea what his pickup line was going to be. All he knew was that he had to get to her, right that second...”

“Though you should still let her do what she wants, don't let her take total control of you or you won't be making the most of your experience.”