"There are all kinds of artists in the world. If people can combine the talent that they have inside of them with the hard work that it takes to develop it, they can become true artists ( Read more... )

"For the destination is always staring just out-of-view and all the signs are flashing 'access denied.'  I make meaning of the failure to arrive, for so often it is a breaking down of the chain of sense that lets me find my way.  A way away from the scanning over and over what went wrong--the failure of community that may, in flits and faults, give ( Read more... )

"The flower is the poetry of reproduction.  It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life."
--Jean Giraudoux

"Love and success, always in that order.  It's that simple and that difficult."
--Mister Rogers

The Oven Bird

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid summer and a mild wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says ( Read more... )

"We don't always succeed in what we try--certainly not by the world's standards--but I think you'll find it's the willingness to keep trying that matters most."

--Mister Rogers

"If you read a lot of books, you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well viewed."
-Lily Tomlin

"It's so tempting for some people to turn on the television or the radio when they first walk into a room or get in the car ... to fill any space with noise.  I wonder what some people are afraid might happen in the silence?  Some of us must have forgotten how nourishing silence can be."
--Mister Rogers

"When we're writing, I'm not sure that we think of the reader. It's more that we pray not to lie, to get it right, so that if we're writing about a tree, we get that tree and not a petrified log.... Every poem is a prayer against loneliness. When I write, there are two people: the poem I'm writing and the poem that wants to be written. When I ( Read more... )

"We'd all like to feel self-reliant and capable of coping with whatever adversity comes our way, but that's not how most human beings are made. It's my belief that the capacity to accept help is inseparable from the capacity to give help when our turn comes to be strong ( Read more... )

"Contrary to what's implied by commercials, nothing we buy can ever take away our loneliness or fill our emptiness or heal our brokenness. You know yourself--way down deep--that what really matters is how we live this life with our neighbors (those who we happen to be with at the moment). That's what really matters. That's really ALL that ( Read more... )

"I realize that it isn't very fashionable to talk about some things being holy; nevertheless, if we ever want to rid ourselves of personal and corporate emptiness, brokenness, loneliness, and fear, we will have to allow ourselves room for that which we cannot see, hear, touch, or control ( Read more... )