Doing something does not require discipline. It creates its own discipline - with a little help from caffeine.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.

At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.

A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.

As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net.

Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.

According to Inuit culture in Greenland, a person possesses six or seven souls. The souls take the form of tiny people scattered throughout the body.

The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.

Prayer is more than a wish

The small courtesies sweeten life the greater ennoble it.

It doesn't always turn out. It's not always a happy ending when sometimes you say things that you think, and it goes against the grain of the larger group.

No one imposes things on anyone in Europe. That's not my notion, nor is it my temperament. The EU has always functioned under the banner of respect, equilibrium and trust.

I put the sweat of my life into this project, and if it's a failure, I'll leave the country and never come back.

I'm a walking, talking enigma. We're a dying breed.

I think that an act of love is immortal; once tendered, it can never really be taken back.

Hear one side and you will be in the dark. Hear both and all will be clear.

What great changes have not been ambitious?

My only real claim to anyone's attention lies in my writing