It had never occurred to me before but everything in New York is built upon another thing, nothing is entirely by itself, each thing as strange as the last, and connected.

The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.

I write about what I know; and I write about things that are new to me, and that I didn't know before.

The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own.

Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.

There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.

There's a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we've left it.

We have to admire the world for not ending on us.

It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful.

Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive.

Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter -- it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.

Silence is not certain token That no secret grief is there Sorrow which is never spoken Is the heaviest load to bear.

My mother was the sweetest lady who ever lived on this planet, but if you tried to tell her that Jesus wasn't a Christian, she would stomp you to death.

Depression leads him close to his wounds, but only the mourning for what he has missed, missed at the crucial time, can lead to real healing.

I like Nine Inch Nails, and I like hip-hop.

Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan and she's demanding that we invade 'Tsunami.'

Winning has to do with gaining personal power through the practice of meditation and mindfulness; not draining your energy on ridiculous things and people.

I'm still learning, you know. At 80, I feel there is a lot I don't know.

Hey, I always say: if you want a quiet life, become a monk.

On the radio I listen to the easy-listening stations, the jazz stations.

The communal life of human beings had . . . a two-fold foundation: the compulsion to work, which was created by external necessity, and the power of love.