Nothing erodes [a mother's love]. It is not sand on a beach. It is the nuclear heart of things-hard as the rock of this earth.

Step out from behind the words. When you're a writer you can imagine that the words speak for you and are you, but they're not. You are this living breathing bad hair day kind of person.

Have you ever watched a leaf leave a tree? It falls upward first, and then it drifts toward the ground, just as I find myself drifting towards you.

I believe friends enclose us, like a pair of parentheses. Each one knows us differently, each sustains us in a different way.

Words are the weights which hold our history in place.

You know how a river goes on and on? That's my love for you.

Nature is not the number-one mystery, I’ve learned. It’s the heart that takes top honors.

Forgiveness, which is the place that every story turns, the chance we give each other.

We grow too old to lose old friends.

In high school, my desire for friendship far outweighed my talent for it.

How do you know when an apology is true—when it means something, or can change something, or will last outside the moment?

Tomorrow is promised to no one.

Faced with so much ignorance and prejudice currently I can only comment that Facebook is a breeding ground for the worst fruits of our coarse personality.

I'm not a machine. I get really motivated, then I fall off the wagon and want to eat Chinese food and sit on my couch and gain five or 10 pounds!

National Geographic contacted me about getting on their label, and I was like, 'Wow, I want to be label mates with the sharks and lemurs!'

Effective thinking consists of being able to arrive at the truth; truth being defined as that which exists.

I've been smoking nearly 50 years now. I just don't feel safe breathing anything I can't see!

You can only be a good father in relationship to your childhood.

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.

In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.

The greatest justice in life is to be who one is.