At some unnoticed moment, I began to understand that a life is written in indelible ink. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
Time ... brings us everything we have and are, then comes with a back-loader and starts taking it all away. — 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
It's one of the saving graces in a life, to be able to perceive one's own and others' absurdity, to notice our… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
I've gone to Yaddo many times, I've worked at the Rockefeller Foundation's Center for Scholars and Artists in Bellagio. That these are… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
“To feel sabi is to feel keenly one’s own sharp and particular existence amid its own impermanence, and to value the singular… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
So much of our lives depends on accidents of birth, time, and geography. This haunts me. In some lives, few "or"s are… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
At some unnoticed moment, I began to understand that a life is written in indelible ink. What I've chosen, what's happened unchosen,… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
“ Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World If the gods bring to you a strange and frightening creature,… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
“Some stories last many centuries, others only a moment. All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass, grow distant and more beautiful with… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
“ When Your Life Looks Back, When your life looks back-- As it will, at itself, at you--what will it say? Inch… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read - in such a moment, anything can happen. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
“ The Cloudy Vase Past time, I threw the flowers out, washed out the cloudy vase. How easily the old clearness leapt,… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer's physical experience comes into us when we read her poem. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
At another level, though, poems can craft an eraser - we can't revise the past, but poems allow us some malleability, an… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
The heft of a life in the hands grows both lighter and weightier. Over time, my life has become more saturated with… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
Any artist, in any field, wants to press deeper, to discover further. Image and sound play are among the strongest colors available… — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
I don't have a cell phone (though for years I've kept saying, "soon"). — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags, being careful between the trees to leave extra room. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
Habit, laziness, and fear conspire to keep us comfortably within the familiar. — Jane Hirshfield Copy Share Image
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 Image
