I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild an want it back.

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.

Live a good life. More smiling, less worrying. More compassion, less judgment. More blessed, less stressed. More love, less hate.

He walked out without his money.The lesson to me was clear: hold onto your integrity at all costs. Never compromise on that.

Into the Volcano (Wood 2008) holds out the promise of

He who hesitates is last.

How do you end a meditation session? It's nice to chant a mantra again. Maybe repeat it a few times. It seals the meditation. Do your best and then just give it to eternity.

Innocence has nothing to dread.

The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice.

Humanity has to travel a hard road to wisdom, and it has to travel it with bleeding feet.

I want to go out at the top, but the secret is knowing when you're at the top, it's so difficult in this business, your career fluctuates all the time, up and down, like a pair of trousers.

Plans turn promises into results and dreams into realities.