Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last! What a task to ask of anything, or anyone, yet it is ours, and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

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.

I grabbed at my chest, instinctively, and he grabbed at his. We were both trying to stop the pain, which was the result of his thoughts of ending his pursuit of me.

What kind of society have we become when children in a great city cannot rely on mothers or fathers for a bowl of cereal in the morning and a brown bag with a sandwich and apple in it for lunch?

Everyone knows that in most people's estimation, to do anything cooly is to do it genteelly.

I think it's a natural fit, major league baseball and country music.

But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.

If I have a drink in my hand, sometimes it accidentally falls in the direction of the person.

It may not always be easy, convenient, or politically correct to stand for truth and right, but it is the right thing to do. Always.

It is a sad thing to want for happiness, but it is a terrible thing to see another groping about blindly for it, when it is almost within the grasp.

I get very nervous in un-trodden territory but it's important to keep doing it just to prove to myself that I can do it.

...the ten thousand things belong to one storehouse and life and death share the same body.