Maggie Smith: “Is the body a suit or a suitcase? Bear with me here.”

Rumi: “The body is a device to calculate / the astronomy of the spirit. / Look through that astrolabe / and become oceanic.”

Mary Oliver: “When it’s over, I want to say: all my life / I was a bride married to amazement.”

Andrea Gibson: “When I realized the storm was inevitable, I made it my medicine.”

Brian Patten: “My heart was like a firefly; it moved / through the darkest objects laughing”

Donika Kelly: “The home I’ve been making inside myself started / with a razing”

Julia Cameron: “I wish I could take language / And fold it like cool, moist rags. / I would lay words on your forehead.”

Marge Piercy: “The people I love the best / jump into work head first / without dallying in the shallows”

Linda Pastan: “But why the last? I ask. Why not / live each day as if it were the first— / all raw astonishment”

John O'Donohue: “The human soul is hungry for beauty.”