For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.

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.

It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.

I try to train as much as I can, as much as my schedule allows it.

A good one iron shot is about as easy to come by as an understanding wife.

Reality TV has ruined people's ability to watch documentary.

I am a product of the "Hippie" theater movement of the '60s.

We can't change minds without knowing what's in them.

Mark in what order: first, our calling; then, our election; not beginning with our election first. By our calling, arguing our election.

He leaned down and whispered to me: No matter how thin you get, no matter how short you cut your hair, it's still going to be you underneath. And he let go of my arm and walked back down the hall.

We have ploughed the vast ocean in a fragile bark.

I escaped a North Korean prison camp