We know the effects of many things, but the cause of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture.
Honor the words that enter and attach to your brain.
We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.
That's why I'm not to be trusted. Because a wound to the heart is also a wound to the mind
I caution you as I was never cautioned: You will never let go, you will never be satiated. You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger. Your body will age, you will continue to need. You will want the earth, then more of the earth-- Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond. It is encompassing, it will not minister. Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you. It will not keep you alive.
I am attracted to ellipsis, to the unsaid, to suggestion, to eloquent, deliberate silence. The unsaid, for me, exerts great power: often I wish an entire poem could be made in this vocabulary. It is analogous to the unseen.
The advantage of poetry over life is that poetry, if it is sharp enough, may last.
It's not funny when you actually get shot, but afterwards, yeah, it's funny.
My books are often shelved around those of Chinua Achebe and Margaret Atwood, or Chimamanda Adichie and Monica Ali. All of this depends, of course, on the bookstore and how conversant the shelf stocker is with the alphabet.
All nature wears one universal grin.
The lawyer must either learn to live more capaciously or be content to find himself continuously less trusted, more circumscribed, till he becomes hardly more important than a minor administrator, confined to a monotonous round of record and routine, without dignity, inspiration, or respect.