A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at s….

I wake up thinking: What am I reading? What will I read next? I'm terrified that I'll run out, that I will read through all I want to, and be forced ….

Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff..

About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless an….

There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales….

If even rock was interesting, if even this ugliness was worth whole shelves at the library, required sophisticated tools to study, and inspired grown….

Writers serve as the memory of a people. They chew over our public past..

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as a dying friend. I hold its hand and hope it will get better..

People who read are not too lazy to turn on the television; they prefer books..

He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know..

The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring..

Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we sense them..

No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too, but then the times get to them, and the wear out ….

No one can help you if you're stuck in a work. Only you can figure a way out, because only you can see the work's possibilities..

You can serve or you can sing, and wreck your heart in prayer, working the world's hard work..

No, the point is not only does time fly and do we die, but that in these reckless conditions we live at all, and are vouchsafed, for the duration of ….

The reader's ear must adjust down from loud life to the subtle, imaginary sounds of the written word. An ordinary reader picking up a book can't yet ….

A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order - willed, faked, and so brought into being..

We are here to witness. There is nothing else to do with those mute materials we do not need. Until Larry teaches his stone to talk, until God change….

It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book o….

I sip my coffee. I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once yo….