“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

“I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple -- or a green field -- a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing -- an artifact, a moment of seeml...”

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

“Every springI hear the thrush singingin the glowing woodshe is only passing through.His voice is deep,then he lifts it until it seemsto fall from the sky.I am thrilled.I am grateful.Then, by the en...”

“I stood like Adam in his lonely gardenOn that first morning, shaken out of sleep,Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves,Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift.”

“I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.”

“Disobey God and you are forgiven. Disobey Nature and you get disease.”

“Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a sid...”

“Cancer. The word meant the same to me as tsunami or piranha. I had never seen them; I wasn't even quite sure what they were, but I knew they were bad and I knew in many cases they were deadly.”

“Im not a woman you bring home to Mother, pick out china patterns with, or Mary forefend, breed. Ive seen a chunk of the universe, true, but theres still so much more to see. I doubt Ill ever cure t...”

“My hope, my heaven, my trust must be,My gentle guide, in following thee.”

“Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmonious...”