“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.”

“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.”

“Prose cannot compete with the economy of poetry, the ability to have a full artistic experience in a short period of time.”

“Poetry privileges music and is aesthetically more challenging. Prose privileges information and is emotionally more challenging.”

“If dysfunction means that a family doesn't work, then every family ambles into some arena in which that happens, where relationships get strained or even break down entirely. We fail each other or disappoint each other. That goes for parents, siblings, kids, marriage partners - the whole enchilada.”

“There are women succeeding beyond their wildest dreams because of their sobriety.”

“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.”

“I think a dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.”

“A university is a city of ideas, and we're grateful you became citizens of our city.”

“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.”

“But it's a neurological fact that the scared self holds on while the reasoned one lets go.”