Quotes from Stephen Kuusisto

We are writing in the age of stylish minimalism that in truth has become even more cautious because of word processing. Nowadays, creative writing students are underwriting rather than overdoing it.

I had to slow down. If I was going to listen to Venice properly I needed to hear the cadence of the place. I needed to stand still. <...> I thought of Whitman observing the parade of humanity with lewd concentration. Walt had a good ear. He loved opera and knew how to sit perfectly still.

We all face a choice between freedom and grief. The former requires not thinking so much of yourself you forget what road you're on. Modesty is a requirement if you're walking a long way.

This is the thing...you give everything to raising a guide-dog puppy, but the everything comes from you spirit -- it's your happiness, your wakefulness, your love of life itself. Puppies take this into their hearts like vitamins.

Empathy, at its core, is knowing how not to hurt each other.

We're lovable in the ordinary.

My own hearing has become careful and algebraic.

Imagine loving an animal for over a year and then one morning you get up and put it into a crate and drive it to the airport and send it to the guide dog school.

Only fifty percent of the dogs who are bred and raised

What I knew about love I could put in a thimble. It was akin to my knowledge of "red," for what did I know about it? I knew it was an important color.

Who needs to read fast? In Nepal, when someone dies, their relatives string garlands of yellow flowers and float them across the sacred river, a bridge to the beyond. This is not assembly-line work. So I read slowly.