A wild creature is not subject to any will except its own

The silencing of the rainforests is a double deforestation, not only of trees but a deforestation of the mind's music, medicine and knowledge.

Language is wild - you can't fence it or tell it what to do - and it's the same with people. Even under the worst excesses of Stalinism or consumerism, the human spirit will still express itself.

Children say they are unhappy in every language they have. They say it in silence, and they say it in riots.

We are animal in our blood and in our skin. We were not born for pavements and escalators but for thunder and mud.

Human language is lit with animal life: we play cats-cradle or have hare-brained ideas; we speak of badgering, or outfoxing someone; to squirrel something away and to ferret it out.

Just because Galileo was a heretic doesn't make every heretic a Galileo.

Singing with others is an unmediated, shared experience as each person feels the same music reverberating in their individual bodies. Singing is part of our humanity; it is embodied empathy.

Clock measurement is not time itself. In fact, so opposed are they that one could argue the clock is not a synonym, but the opposite of time.

As a writer you have a duty to be a messenger.

The losses of the natural world are our loss, their silence silences something within the human mind.

For, truly, the man who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

Work always makes a difference.

Peace begins with understanding and trust.

Dream: I look for  Lama Lodrö Kagyu  teacher friend  hearing he's ill & I'm ill, too -  I enter his room and he says "I've been trying to find you - I wanted you  to know illness is just phenomena

I think what endurance sports teach you is to stay dedicated, stay focused, and also to understand you're going to have ups and downs, but you need to keep running right through them.

My grandparents all came from Lithuania to South Africa. My first novel, Middlepost, is a fictional account of that journey.

There's something I love about how stark the contrast is between January and June in Sweden.

In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity.

Not only was it enough to be a cover band, it was perhaps the highest calling. After all, if you could play music recorded by others, stay true to the original, and still add fire and flare, why not?

I'm thankful for all of my opportunities. But I'm not trying to have a career where I am hanging on one of Dr. Drew's rehab shows. I can go home.