"This is a competitive business — there are a lot of women who want these jobs, but experience, education, and smarts go a long way. I’m still figuring it out — I learn new things every day. Once you stop learning, you should get out of the business. It’s just really about being hungry for more."

"I didn't know whether to run from my seat...I was in the line of fire. My desk is now a crime scene."

"Intelligence is attractive, but so is life experience. You can’t amass it just by reading a ton of books. But you can live a lot of life in a short time. Travel. Talk to everyone. Collect adventures, and use them to understand the world. That’s how you learn to treat people well. And that’s sexy."

"When I remember those difficult days, I remember the fear, I remember the strength, I remember that hand of that fellow American soldier, reassuring me that I was going to be okay."

"My hero is every American who says "My country needs me" and answers that call to fight. I had the good fortune and opportunity to come home and to tell the truth; many soldiers, like Pat Tillman... did not have that opportunity. The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype."

"The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own heroes — ideals for heroes — and they don't need to be told elaborate lies."

"I have repeatedly said, when asked, that if the stories about me helped inspired our troops and rally a nation, then perhaps there was some good. However, I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and try to make me a legend, when the real heroics — of my fellow soldiers that day — were legendary."

"Tales of great heroism were being told... at my parents home in Wirt County, West Virginia, it was understaged by media all repeating the story of the "little girl Rambo" from rural West Virginia who went down fighting. It was not true."

"A group came to the hospital to rescue me. I could hear them speaking in English but I was still very afraid. Then a soldier came into the room. He tore the American flag from his uniform and he handed it to me in my hand. And he told me "We're American soldiers, and we're here to take you home." And I looked at him and I said "Yes, I am an American soldier too.""

"The nurses at the hospital tried to soothe me, and they even tried unsuccessfully at one point to return me to Americans."

"I had a story tell, a story that needed to be told so that people would know the truth."

"I was given opportunities not extended to my fellow soldiers, I embraced those opportunities to set the record straight."

"I lived the war in Iraq, and today I still have family and friends fighting in Iraq. My support for our troops is unwavering. I believe this is not a time for finger-pointing, it is a time for truth — the whole truth— vs. hype, and misinformation."

"I'm not about to take credit for something I didn't do."

"It is too short — the day we are born, we commence with our dying."

"Joy! Again, around—a pause, a sound—a song: a way a lone a last a loved a long. A cave, a grave, a day: arise, ascend. (Areion, Rharian; go free and graze. Amen.) A shore, a tide, unmoored—a sight, abroad: A dawn, unmarked, undone, undarked (a god). No time. No flock. No chime, no clock. No end. White star, white ship—Nightjar, transmit: transcend!"

"Love is not a symptom of time. Time is just a symptom of love"

"So it would seem to be true: when cruel birth debases, we forget. When cruel death debases, we believe it erases all the rest that precedes. But stand brave, life-liver, bleeding out your days in the river of time. Stand brave: time moves both ways"

"Now the towns and forests, highways and plains, fall back in circles like an emptying drain. And I won't come round this way again, where the lonely wind abides, and you will not take my heart, alive."

"In martial wind, and in clarion rain, we minced into battle, wincing in pain; not meant for walking, backs bound in twine: not angel or devil, but level, in time."

"Hey little leaf, lying on the ground— now you're turning slightly brown! Why don't you come back on the tree, turn the color green the way you ought to be?"

"And never will I wed. I'll hunt the pearl of death to the bottom of my life, and ever hold my breath, till I may be the diver's wife."

"Recall the word you gave: to count your way across the depths of this arid world, where you would yoke the waves, and lay a bed of shining pearls! I dream it every night: the ringing of the pail, the motes of sand dislodged, the shucking, quick and bright; the twinned and cast-off shells reveal a single heart of white."

"I know we must abide each by the rules that bind us here: the divers, and the sailors, and the women on the pier."

"And in an infinite regress: Tell me, why is the pain of birth lighter borne than the pain of death?"

"lists of sins and solemn vows don't make you any friends."

"All we saw was that Time is taller than Space is wide. That's why we got bound to a round desert island, 'neath the sky where our sailors have gone. Have they drowned, in those windy highlands? Highlands away, my John."

"As the day is long, so the well runs dry, and we came to see Time is taller than Space is wide. And we bade goodbye to the Great Divide: found unlimited simulacreage to colonize!"

"What’s redacted will repeat, and you cannot learn that you burn when you touch the heat, so we touch the heat, and we cut facsimiles of love and death (just separate holes in sheets where you cannot breathe, and you cannot see)."

"In December of that year, the word came down that she was here. The days grew shorter. I was sure, if she came 'round, I’d hold my ground. I'd endure. But they'd alluded to a change that came to pass, and Spring, deranged, weeping grass and sleepless, broke herself upon my windowglass. And I could barely breathe, for seeing all the splintered light that leaked her fissures, fleeing, launched in flight: unstaunched daylight, brightly bleeding, bleached the night with dawn, deleting, in that high sun, after our good run, when the spirit bends beneath knowing it must end."

"Above them, parades mark the passing of days through parks where pale colonnades arch in marble and steel, where all of the Twenty Thousand attending your foot fall (and the Cause that they died for) are lost in the idling birdcalls, and the records they left are cryptic at best, lost in obsolescence"

"In the folds and the branches, somewhere, out there, I was only just born into open air. Now hush, little babe. You don’t want to be down in the trenches, remembering with me, where you will not mark my leaving, and you will not hear my parting song. Nor is there cause for grieving. Nor is there cause for carrying on."

"But inasmuch as that light is loaned, insofar as we’ve borrowed bones, must every debt now be repaid in star-spotted, sickle-winged night raids"

"The tap of hangers, swaying in the closet — unburdened hooks and empty drawers — and everywhere I tried to love you is yours again, and only yours."

"It does not suffice for you to say I am a sweet girl, or to say you hate to see me sad because of you. It does not suffice, to merely lie beside each other, as those who love each other do."

"Coats of bouclé, jacquard and cashmere; cartouche and tweed, all silver shot — and everything that could remind you of how easy I was not."

"This is the song for Baby Birch. I will never know you. And at the back of what we've done, there is that knowledge of you."

"But it can make you feel over, and old (Lord, you know it's a shame), when I only want for you to pull over, and hold me, till I can't remember my own name."

"We broke our hearts, in the war between St. George and the dragon, but both, in equal part, are welcome to come along. I'm inviting everyone."

"By the time you read this I will be so far away Daddy longlegs, how in the world Am I to be expected to stay?"

"We are blessed and sustained by what is not said"

"Have you come, then, to rescue me?" He laughed and said, "from what, 'Colleen'?" You dried and dressed most willingly. You corseted, and caught the dread disease by which one comes to know such peace."

"Water were your limbs And the fire was your hair And then the moon caught your eye, and you rose through the air. Well if you've seen true light, then this is my prayer: Will you call me When you get there?"

"Well I'm starvin' and freezin' In this measly old bed (Then I'll crawl across the salt flats To stroke your sweet head) Come across the desert, with no shoes on? (I love you truly, or I love no-one)"

"Picking through your pocket lining, well what is this? Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?"

"And though our bones, they may break And our souls separate, why the long face? And though our bodies recoil From the grip of the soil, why the long face?"

"Then the slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precision While, somewhere, with your pliers and glue, you make your first incision And, in a moment of almost-unbearable vision, doubled over with the hunger of lions 'Hold me close', cooed the dove, who was stuffed now with sawdust and diamonds."

"Now her coat drags through the water, Bagging, with a life's-worth of hunger, limitless minnows In the magnetic embrace, Balletic and glacial, of Bear's insatiable shadow."

"We could stand for a century Staring, with our heads cocked In the broad daylight at this thing Joy Landlocked In bodies that don't keep Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being Until we don't be"