I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second. And in America, we have it backwards.

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.

Ray snorted. "Yeah, the air right around where the boat was parked is absolutely full of shit. Like the devil blew his nose all over it.""That's a pretty picture, Ray.

Always listen to yourself... It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention.

To gather with God's people in united adoration of the Father is as necessary to the Christian life as prayer.

To succeed in life in today's world, you must have the will and tenacity to finish the job .

One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying.

Focus on opportunities, not problems.

Some people do have a very innate sexuality to them. I may or may not have it, but it makes people see you in a certain light that has nothing to do with me.

Nothing so casts down the manly mind from it's height as the fondling of women and those bodily contacts which belong to the married state.

The problem I've got is that I really, really like drugs. I love everything about them. It is horrific being sober all the time-utterly awful.