Quotes from Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

As with every abstraction, we need to tie the word to actualities to keep it from floating into the euphemistic ether where it can do as much harm as carbon.

Outrage... can (and often does) look like arrogance or offensiveness or, certainly, impropriety. But it can be what fuels love of justice and mercy.

Eugene Peterson claims that "to eyes that can see, every bush is a burning bush:' Poems, when they are doing what they do best, offer us a glimpse of that fire.

But the more I see of the damage simplistic thinking can do, the more I admire and cling to John Keats's notion of "negative capability" which he defined as the capacity to dwell in ambiguity or paradox without any "irritable reaching after fact and reason." To allow room for wonder, speculation, uncertainty.

The exercise of the imagination is the training ground of compassion. Stories educate the heart. Stories, like poetry, are related to prayer.