Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond. Denial, repression, all those psychological adaptations we developed in childhood were ways of not being there, because being there was too painful. Writing demands that we cut through and be where we are, like a cat gripping the side of a cement wall at the top of a ten-story building—stay there and look around and not blank out because it is too hard. If you learn what is in the present moment you can transport it.

— Natalie Goldberg