Poets and monks... We're both sort of peripheral to the world..

Like faith, marriage is a mystery. The person you're committed to spending your life with is known and yet unknown, at the same time remarkably intim….

Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier..

Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future..

But it is daily tasks, daily acts of love and worship that serve to remind us that the religion is not strictly an intellectual pursuit, and these da….

This is a God who is not identified with the help of a dictionary but through a relationship..

Not money, or success, or position or travel or love makes happiness,--service is the secret..

For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn't know we needed and take us places where we didn't know we didn't want to go. As we stumble th….

I wonder if children don't begin to reject both poetry and religion for similar reasons, because the way both are taught takes the life out of them..

Changing husbands is only changing troubles..

I am learning to see loneliness as a seed that, when planted deep enough, can grow into writing that goes back out into the world..

Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found..

You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that, and cling to it through thick and thin..

Maybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are othe….

It's all so beautiful . . . the spring . . . and books and music and fires. . . . Why aren't they enough?.

In middle age we are apt to reach the horrifying conclusion that all sorrow, all pain, all passionate regret and loss and bitter disillusionment are ….

A short-lived fascination with another person may be exciting-I think we've all seen people aglow, in a state of being "in love with love"-but such a….

But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion..

But hope has an astonishing resilience and strength. Its very persistence in our hearts indicates that it is not a tonic for wishful thinkers but the….

The very nature of marriage means saying yes before you know what it will cost. Though you may say the “I do” of the wedding ritual in all sincerity,….

Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine..