"My mother was the first songwriter I knew; Emily Dickinson was the first poet and my grandmother the first storyteller...From Emily I learned that the immense silences I found within me were navigable by words and metaphor."

"There’s no higher entitlement than thinking that you should live forever, when part of the beauty of nature is that even the stars die. That's what Emily Dickinson said: 'That it will never come again/is what makes life so sweet.' I believe that."

"The complexity of women's undergarments in nineteenth-century America is not to be waved off, and I proceeded like a polar explorer through clips, clasps, and moorings, catches, straps, and whalebone stays, sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness."

"I'm from the Emily Dickinson and Flannery O'Connor school of writing, where you write about your Amherst backyard or about a farm in Milledgevilk, and then you're actually writing about everything it means to be human."

"No great poet has written so much bad verse as Emily Dickinson...Her coy and oddly childish poems of nature and female friendship are products of a time when one of the careers open to women was perpetual childhood."

"Friends dislike being apart. Separation, says Emily Dickinson, is all the Hell we need. Each shared moment is precious. And the only ones who can remember the hour of loneliness are those who survive it."

"There is another thing about my childhood that is interesting now, in the light of later happenings. I might have said, with Emily Dickinson: "I never saw a moor,/I never saw the sea;/Yet know I how the heather looks,/And what a wave must be." For I never saw the ocean until I went from college to the marine laboratories at Woods Hole, on Cape Cod. Yet as a child I was fascinated by the thought of it. I dreamed about it and wondered what it would look like."

"Dickinson was a woman of privilege who never left her house, nor had to deal with issues beyond which white dress to wear on a given day."

"One who, as a child, knew Emily Dickinson well and loved her much recollects her most vividly as a white, ethereal vision, stepping from her cloistral solitude on to the verandah, daintily unrolling a great length of carpet before her with her foot, strolling down to where the carpet ended among her flowers, then turning back and shutting herself out of the world."

"(What is it about Emily Dickinson that moves you?) Her use of language, certainly. Her solitude, as well, and the style of that solitude. There is something very moving and in the best sense funny. She isn't solemn."

"In English, you know who I love, and have translated? Emily Dickinson...I translated Dickinson. It came out in the Nuevo Diario a long time ago, in the beginning of the 1980s. I love her very much."

"Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon."

"Wild nights - Wild nights! Were I with thee Wild nights should be Our luxury!Futile - the winds - To a Heart in port - Done with the Compass - Done with the Chart!Rowing in Eden - Ah - the Sea! Might I but moor - tonight - In thee!"

"Who has not found the heaven below Will fail of it above. God's residence is next to mine, His furniture is love."

"Who has not found the Heaven – below – Will fail of it above – For Angels rent the House next ours, Wherever we remove –"

"What Soft – Cherubic Creatures – These Gentlewomen are – One would as soon assault a Plush – Or violate a Star –Such Dimity Convictions – A Horror so refined Of freckled Human Nature – Of Deity – ashamed –"

"We outgrow love, like other things And put it in the Drawer – Till it an Antique fashion shows – Like Costumes Grandsires wore."

"Upon the gallows hung a wretch, Too sullied for the hell To which the law entitled him. As nature’s curtain fell The one who bore him tottered in, For this was woman’s son. "'Twas all I had," she stricken gasped; Oh, what a livid boon!"

"Truth – is as old as God – His Twin identity And will endure as long as He A Co-Eternity –And perish on the Day Himself is borne away From Mansion of the Universe A lifeless Deity."

"To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights, What must the Midnights – be!"

"This quiet dust was gentlemen and ladies And lads and girls; Was laughter and ability and sighing, And frocks and curls."

"This is my letter to the World That never wrote to Me – The simple News that Nature told – With tender Majesty Her Message is committed To Hands I cannot see – For love of Her – Sweet – countrymen – Judge tenderly – of Me"

"They shut me up in Prose - As when a little Girl They put me in the Closet - Because they liked me "still" -Still! Could themself have peeped - And seen my Brain - go round - They might as wise have lodged a Bird For Treason - in the Pound -"

"There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons - That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes -Heavenly Hurt, it gives us - We can find no scar, But internal difference - Where the Meanings, are -"

"There is a word Which bears a sword Can pierce an armed man. It hurls its barbed syllables,— At once is mute again. But where it fell The saved will tell On patriotic day, Some epauletted brother Gave his breath away.Wherever runs the breathless sun, Wherever roams the day, There is its noiseless onset, There is its victory! Behold the keenest marksman! The most accomplished shot! Time's sublimest target Is a soul "forgot"!"

"There is a solitude of space, A solitude of sea, A solitude of death, but these Society shall be, Compared with that profounder site, That polar privacy, A Soul admitted to Itself: Finite Infinity."

"The sweets of Pillage can be known To no one but the Thief, Compassion for Integrity Is his divinest Grief."

"I've known her – from an ample nation – Choose One – Then – close the Valves of her attention – Like Stone –"

"The Soul selects her own Society – Then – shuts the Door – To her divine Majority – Present no more –"

"The pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him Is aristocracy."

"If Aims impel these Astral Ones The ones allowed to know Know that which makes them as forgot As Dawn forgets them – now"

"The grass so little has to do,— A sphere of simple green, With only butterflies to brood, And bees to entertain,And stir all day to pretty tunes The breezes fetch along, And hold the sunshine in its lap And bow to everything;And thread the dews all night, like pearls, And make itself so fine,— A duchess were too common For such a noticing.And even when it dies, to pass In odors so divine, As lowly spices gone to sleep, Or amulets of pine.And then to dwell in sovereign barns, And dream the days away,— The grass so little has to do, I wish I were a hay!"

"The face we choose to miss, Be it but for a day— As absent as a hundred years When it has rode away."

"The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear; Their coming back seems possible For many an ardent year.And then, that we have followed them We more than half suspect, So intimate have we become With their dear retrospect."

"A Vastness, as a Neighbor, came, A Wisdom, without Face, or Name, A Peace, as Hemispheres at Home And so the Night became."

"The blunder is to estimate,— "Eternity is Then," We say, as of a station. Meanwhile he is so near, He joins me in my ramble, Divides abode with me, No friend have I that so persists As this Eternity."

"That such have died enables us The tranquiller to die; That such have lived, certificate For immortality."

"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant – Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind –"

"Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires a sorest need.Not one of all the purple Host Who took the Flag today Can tell the definition So clear of VictoryAs he defeated – dying – On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Burst agonized and clear!"

"The Bustle in a House The Morning after Death Is solemnest of industries Enacted upon Earth -The Sweeping up the Heart And putting Love away We shall not want to use again Until Eternity -"

"Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife! Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the culprit,—Life!"

"God preaches, a noted Clergyman – And the sermon is never long, So instead of getting to Heaven, at last – I'm going, all along."

"Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – I keep it, staying at Home – With a Bobolink for a Chorister – And an Orchard, for a Dome –"

"Some Days retired from the rest In soft distinction lie, The Day that a companion came— Or was obliged to die."

"Immortal is an ample word When what we need is by, But when it leaves us for a time, 'Tis a necessity.Of heaven above the firmest proof We fundamental know, Except for its marauding hand, It had been heaven below."

"So proud she was to die It made us all ashamed That what we cherished, so unknown To her desire seemed.So satisfied to go Where none of us should be, Immediately, that anguish stooped Almost to jealousy."

"Safe in their Alabaster Chambers - Untouched by Morning - And untouched by noon - Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection, Rafter of Satin and Roof of Stone -Grand go the Years, In the Crescent above them - Worlds scoop their Arcs - And Firmaments - row - Diadems - drop - And Doges surrender - Soundless as Dots, On a Disk of Snow."

"Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn Indicative that suns go down; The notice to the startled grass That darkness is about to pass."

"Our journey had advanced; Our feet were almost come To that odd fork in Being's road, Eternity by term.Our pace took sudden awe, Our feet reluctant led. Before were cities, but between, The forest of the dead.Retreat was out of hope,— Behind, a sealed route, Eternity's white flag before, And God at every gate."

"One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted – One need not be a House – The Brain has Corridors – surpassing Material Place –"