People who read are not too lazy to turn on the television; they prefer books.

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.

Nobody steals books but your friends.

Love conquers all. Let Love then smile at our defeat.

Turn back to humanity – to the world – to love! Become gardeners – whatever you want! – become nothing! – and the whole of space will be free for you.

The world is an oyster but you don't crack it open on a mattress

What interests me about fiction is, in part, its flickering edge between realism and where a tear in the fabric of a story lets in some other sort of light.

Remember that the worst accidents occur in the middle of the road.

My characters are always on the outside; the spotlight's not on them. But they do get somewhere.

Covering Africa is 80 percent logistics and 20 percent reporting.

What really makes science grow is new ideas, including false ideas.

Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week.