Our family was on the lunatic fringe. My mother was always completely irrepressible. My father made crowd noises into a microphone.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.

At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.

A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.

As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net.

Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.

According to Inuit culture in Greenland, a person possesses six or seven souls. The souls take the form of tiny people scattered throughout the body.

The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.

Greatness is the quality of time converted into production or value

Don’t take your happiness forgranted. Be proactive aboutmaintaining and sustaining itin your life.

Nobody is gonna love you like you. You're gonna be your best salesman.

I got a very good life. I sold plenty of records, I get recognized plenty, I can always have somebody call up and get me a fine table at a restaurant. What do you really need, ultimately?

One more thing: don’t feel bad for not telling me that you loved me. You didn’t need to say it. I knew all along that you did.

As an actor, demonstrating your feelings in front of people is not what you're supposed to be doing. You're supposed to hold your emotions and control them, and not show them all over the place.

I don't keep diaries; I consider them like birds; I set them free and let them fly to the depths of the past where they belong!

Tears are liquid love.

Scientifically, there's no debate over whether the fetus is alive and human.

When grace combines with wrinkles, it is admirable. There is an indescribable light of dawn about intensely happy old age. . . . The young person is handsome, but the old, superb.