Finally, the lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.

To rise above treeline is to go above thought, and after, the descent back into bird song, bog orchids, willows, and firs is to sink into the preliterate parts of ourselves.

Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.

To trace the history of a river . . . is to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body.

A tree is a thought, an obstruction stopping the flow of wind and light, trapping water, housing insects, birds, and animals, and breathing in and out. How treelike the human, how human the tree.

Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still.

I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.

I like big, open, spare landscapes. There's lots of room. Nobody bothers you... I feel as if I can think there.

Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.

Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals.

Walking is also an ambulation of mind.

Doing films as an actor, you spend maybe 40 percent of the year doing your chosen profession. If you are on a successful TV show, you spend 80 percent of your year doing the thing you love.

Irrespective of whether we are believers or agnostics, whether we believe in God or karma, moral ethics is a code which everyone is able to pursue.

Will power is but the unflinching purpose to carry the task you set for yourself to fulfillment.

Bandara was not an easy place to return to: it could hide from the common worlds whose periphery it inhabited. But Bandara never had, in all its years, completely disappeared.

Record stores are great because it's good to physically get your hands on the music instead of downloading. It's always better to get the artwork too.

Some day I'll write a book and call it 'How I Got the Nickname Pumpsie' and sell it for one dollar, and if everybody who ever asked me that question buys the book, I'll be a millionaire.

People suspend judgment in the presence of mystery.

I love going to the gym and taking aerobics classes and kickboxing. Doing a variety of activities keeps it fresh and helps work other muscles that could potentially help you with your game.

In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals.

That God, Who dwells in my hand, Knows this secret plan Of the things He will do for the world Using my hand!