Any woodthrush shows it - he sings, not to fill the world, but because he is filled. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
Zen is less the study of doctrine than a set of tools for discovering what can be known when the world is… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
An ordinary hole beside a path through the woods might begin to open to altered worlds. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
The trick, though, is to not lose compassion, to not allow the sense of absurdity to outweigh the awareness of real beings,… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
It's more for me as with going into a forest: if you sit quietly for a long time, the life around you… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
You can't write an image, a metaphor, a story, a phrase, without leaning a little further into the shared world, without recognizing… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
Houses are fundamental metaphors for self, world, permeability, transition, interiority, exteriority, multiplicity, and the power to move from one state of being… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music,… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
In my poems though, as you say, the comic arrived fairly late. This doubtless has something to do with growing older. A… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
Go back to The October Palace, which came out in 1994, and there are poems with windows, doors, the rooms of the… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
Immensity is always there, but we so often become numb to it, or deceive ourselves into thinking our own lives and selves… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
Evolution tells us how to survive; art tells us how it's possible still to live even while knowing that we and all… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
I once was asked to contribute to a mushroom poem anthology. I didn't have anything, and so instead ended up writing the introduction. I… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share
Everything has two endings- a horse, a piece of string, a phone call. Before a life, air. And after. As silence is not silence,… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share
A certain amount of housekeeping also goes on in my poems. I wash doorknobs, do dishes, mop floors, patch carpets, cook. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share
Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags, being careful between the trees to leave extra room. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share
My job as a human being as well as a writer is to feel as thoroughly as possible the experience that I am part… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share
I want to preserve a certain unknowing about my own poems - perhaps because unknowing is in itself a useful poetic thirst. To move… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share
Habit, laziness, and fear conspire to keep us comfortably within the familiar. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share
Metaphors think with the imagination and the senses. The hot chili peppers in them explode in the mouth and the mind. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share
At some point I realized that you don't get a full human life if you try to cut off one end of it, that… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share
Immensity is always there, but we so often become numb to it, or deceive ourselves into thinking our own lives and selves are what's… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share
