I have lived my life according to this principle: If I’m afraid of it, then I must do it.
I mostly hate organized religion, which I think is a force for the oppression of women and creates warfare.
The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did.
Anger is really disappointed hope.
Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life – when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love.
If you imagine the world listening, you’ll never write a line. That’s why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.
In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving -instead of actually getting up and leaving.
My mother wanted me to be her wings, to fly as she never quite had the courage to do. I love her for that. I love the fact that she wanted to give birth to her own wings.
The soul is awakened through service.
I think the Jews are an amazing group of people and their survival is amazing.
It takes courage to lead a life. Any life.
I see that the greatest thing about getting older is how your judgment changes and how you come to understand the cycles of life. And you keep having these amazing flashes of understanding.
I don’t think you will ever fully understand how you’ve touched my life and made me who I am. I don’t think you could ever know just how truly special you are that even on the darkest nights you are my brightest star.
Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.
What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not by exhortation.
As women, we can’t look old. We can’t be fat. We’re supposed to look like the 14-year-old models in Vogue, who are younger and younger and skinnier and skinnier, and they are air-brushed and contoured and Photoshopped.
And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
We all parent the best we can. Being human, we’re ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep.
Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.
I think men have always been afraid of women’s sexuality, and the restrictions they put on women testify to that.