A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.
Mother’s particular devils had remained mysterious to me for decades. So had her past. Few born liars ever intentionally embark in truth’s direction, even those who believe that such a journey might axiomatically set them free.
it was dawning on me how uphill a poet’s path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I’d choose to be happy.
What hurts so bad about youth isn’t the actual butt whippings the world delivers. It’s the stupid hopes playacting like certainties.
Ten years, she’s dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.
Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody’s head off.
Faith is not a feeling, she says. It’s a set of actions. By taking the actions, you demonstrate more faith than somebody who actually has experienced the rewards of prayer and so feels hope.
I lock all my scaredness down in my stomach until the fear hardens into something I hardly notice. I myself harden into a person that I hardly notice.
If we didn’t read people who were bastards, we’d never read anything. Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards.
Having devoted the first half of my life to the dark, I feel obliged to rever any pinpoint of light now.
Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt.
Few born liars ever intentionally embark in truth’s direction, even those who believe that such a journey might axiomatically set them free.
I think about the story of Job I heard in Carol Sharp’s Sunday school. How he sort of learned to lean into feeling hurt at the end, the way you might lean into a heavy wind that almost winds up supporting you after a while.
. . . for a good story, told often enough puts you in rooms you’ve never occupied.
We’re not made to wallow in pleasure. Pleasure is joy’s assassin.
The head can travel a far piece while the body sits in one spot. It can traverse many decades, and many conversations can be had, even with the dead.
Joy, it is, which I’ve never known before, only pleasure or excitement. Joy is a different thing, because its focus exists outside the self – delight in something external, not satisfaction of some inner craving.
Tomorrow! How sweet its prospects for a drunkard the night before. There is no better word. Before the earth hurls itself into sunshine, nothing is not possible.
But it’s a neurological fact that the scared self holds on while the reasoned one lets go.
Slurping these spirits is soul preparation, a warped communion, myself serving as god, priest, and congregation.
Standing in the shower, I feel something on the back of my leg that turns out to be my ass.
The American religion-so far as there is one anymore-seems to be doubt. Whoever believes the least wins, because he’ll never be found wrong.
Just being out of the house with Daddy like this at Fisher’s lights me up enough for somebody to read by me.
Being smart and rich are lucky, but being curious and compassionate will save your ass. Being curious and compassionate can take you out of your ego and edge your soul towards wonder.
A university is a city of ideas, and we’re grateful you became citizens of our city.
I think a dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.
Joy, it is, which I’ve never known before, only pleasure or excitement. Joy is a different thing, because its focus exists outside the self-delight in something external, not satisfaction of some inner craving.
There are women succeeding beyond their wildest dreams because of their sobriety.
I have a completely addictive personality. Diet Coke is my last – God, I know people counting days off Diet Coke; I’m such a Diet Cokehead. Now I won’t let myself buy it.
Poetry is for me Eucharistic. You take someone else’s suffering into your body, their passion comes into your body, and in doing that you commune, you take communion, you make a community with others.
Poetry privileges music and is aesthetically more challenging. Prose privileges information and is emotionally more challenging.
Prose cannot compete with the economy of poetry, the ability to have a full artistic experience in a short period of time.