If you wish to produce a perfect rose, you must cut off the other buds which are spoiling the growth of the perfect flower.

Its beautiful to be alone. To be alone does not mean to be lonely. it means the mind is not influenced and contaminated by society.

It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

I don't mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom. It is a timeless spiritual truth: release attachment to outcomes, deep inside yourself, you'll feel good no matter what.

The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

Throughout life, from childhood, from school until we die, we are taught to compare ourselves with another; yet when I compare myself with another I am destroying myself.

A lily or a rose never pretends, and its beauty is that it is what it is.

The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end - you don't come to an achievement, you don't come to a conclusion. It is an endless river.

Here is my secret: I don't mind what happens.

We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.

If you can hear the bell for the next round, then you are still in the fight! Get off your stool and start swinging...never give up & never quit on your dream!

Life has ill-prepared me for finding any enjoyment in a press of merrymakers.

Suffering raises up those souls that are truly great it is only small souls that are made mean-spirited by it.

I always love the soapy conflicts between somebody's family of origin and their new family - 'Do I have Thanksgiving at my husband's parents' house, or at my parents' house?'

Pittsburgh has this rich industrial past, when it was the heart of the U.S. steel industry, and it burned out as the industry burned out and moved elsewhere.

I must live in my own excrement, breathe in my own poisonous sticky fumes. Yet I am a human being! I still am. Does no one think of that?

Nerves just mean that you care.

I got the swag and it's pumping out my ovaries

The writing of a poem is, for me, in the first place, an almost total act of abandon leading to discovery leading to recognition.

It's our own small voice within that is our oppressor; it says we are not worthy and not powerful enough. Our limited beliefs are the real foes we need to fight and conquer.