“To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not.”

“Because,” he said quietly as she stood up, “until you walked into it, this was an ordinary garden.”

Puzzled, Elizabeth tipped her head. “What is it now?”

“Heaven.”

“There is only one art of writing, and that is the art of poetry.. whether it is in the form of prose or in rhyme and meter or in rhymed cadence.”

“Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.”

“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.”

“I want to take poetry to walk other genres. I want poetry to walk through other genres. When I started writing, this was my main concern: get out of poetry. Let poetry walk the streets of New York. Make her cosmopolitan. See the world. Not in these estrofas, not in these stanzas, which are camisas de fuerza. I have to get out of poetry. I have to do what James Joyce did to the novel: he took the novel out of the novel…”

“Writing as a process of personal expression is an effort to provide meaning to life. Whether it is in the form of poetry which gives a touch of beauty to what we think or feel, or novels or stories as imaginative imitations of life. Whether it will succeed or fail, at least the writing will make us wiser in interpreting our own lives.”

“The true miracle is not walking on water or walking in air, but simply walking on this earth.”

“The greatest poets never write poetry. The Homers and Shakespeares are not the greatest — they are only the greatest that we can know. And so with Handel among musicians. For the highest poetry, whether in music or literature, is ineffable — it must be felt from one person to another, it cannot be articulated.”

“I don't know what I think until I write it down.”