Far off in the red mangroves an alligator has heaved himself onto a hummock of grass and lies there, studying his poems.

it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

I don't ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

What's big, thick, makes the earth move, and wants to have its way with you?" "I don't know, but can you introduce me?

I’d rather have a cup of coffee and a cigarette than live in all that honesty.

The length of one's journey to success is quite irrelevant if one has several reasons why the rewards at the very end of it is worth every sacrifice.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind.

You can draw a penguin on a toilet reading The New York Times and it's adorable, but try doing it with an adult male character, and it's disgusting.

The stuff I went through at Auburn? It didn't matter anymore. I just wanted to play football.

The bisy larke, messager of day.

Our task is not to bring order out of chaos, but to get work done in the midst of chaos.

And what is true of a shop-keeper is true of a shop-keeping nation.

So much of the presidency is a matter of standing in the path of a Newsham Engine for Quenching Fires, opening one's mouth, and attempting to get a drink.