"Also I wanted to be able to..." - Quote by Mary Oliver

“I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage.”

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

“And now my old dog is dead, and another I had after him, and my parents are dead, and that first world, that old house, is sold and lost, and the books I gathered there lost, or sold- but more books bought, and in another place, board by board and stone by stone, like a house, a true life built, and all because I was steadfast about one or two things: loving foxes, and poems, the blank piece of paper, and my own energy- and mostly the shimmering shoulders of the world that shrug carelessly over the fate of any individual that they may, the better, keep the Niles and Amazons flowing.”

“I don't doubt that every prince would like to be both; but since it is hard to accomodate these qualities, if you have to make a choice, to be feared is much safer than to be loved. For it is a good general rule about men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, fearful of danger and greedy for gain....[love] is a link of obligation which men, because they are rotten, will break anything they think doing so serves their advantage; but fear involves dread of punishment, from which they can never escape.”

“Thou ever young, fresh, lov'd, and delicate wooer, whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow”

“I love [my father] so much with all my heart and my soul with every bone in my body I love him so much because he's done so much for me.”

“Though there is one part of writing that is solid and you do it no harm by talking about it, the other is fragile, and if you talk about it, the structure cracks and you have nothing.”

“Working on the plot/story idea for my next novel ... It always takes time.”

“Success doesn't come instantly. Neither does the ability to lead.”