Look, hasn't my body already felt like the body of a flower?

It's morning, and again I am that lucky person who is in it.

The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention.

Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives.

You, too, can be carved anew by the details of your devotion.

Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

Each body is a lion of courage, something precious of the earth.

I got saved by poetry. And I got saved by the beauty of the world.

Sing, if you can sing, and it not still be musical inside yourself.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile.

I always feel that whatever isn't necessary shouldn't be in a poem.

Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.

Today I am altogether without ambition. Where did I get such wisdom?

One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

I grew up in a sad, depressed place. I got out. Poetry saved my life.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention.

I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery.

Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.

If you have ever gone into the woods with me, I must love you very much.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.

I grew up in a confused house: too much unwanted attention or none at all.

I feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst. Death isn't just an idea.

Every day I walk out into the world / to be dazzled, then to be reflective.

Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.

For some things there are no wrong seasons. Which is what I dream of for me.

... Let us risk the wildest places, Lest we go down in comfort, and despair.

Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world.

We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness.

My parents didn't care very much what I did, and that was probably a blessing.

People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.

Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is neither conscious or unconscious.

What I have done is learn to love and learn to be loved. That didn't come easy.

I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us.

To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it.

You never know / What opportunity / Is going to travel to you, / Or through you.

Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents.

I learn a lot about my poems when I read them by the way people respond to them.

I was hurrying through my own soul . . . I was leaning out . . . I was listening.

I don't ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.

Writers must... take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems.

I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.

All culture developed as some wild, raw creature strived to live better and longer.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.

maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us--

Also I wanted to be able to love And we all know how that one goes, don't we? Slowly

I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.

In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that.

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