Perfect does not mean perfect actions in a perfect world, bur appropriate actions in an imperfect one.

If all men lead mechanical, unpoetical lives, this is the real nihilism, the real undoing of the world.

The object of our lives is to look at, listen to, touch, taste things. Without them, - these sticks, stones, feathers, shells, - there is no Deity.

There is no greater difference between men than between grateful and ungrateful people.

Think of Zen, of the Void, of Good and Evil and you are bound hand and foot. Think only and entirely and completely of what you are doing at the moment and you are free as a bird.

A haiku is the expression of a temporary enlightenment, in which we see into the life of things.

I myself think that to have a cat is more important than to have a Bible.

Zen is the unsymbolization of the world.

What is essential is not the answer but the questions; the answers indeed are the death of the life that is in the questions.

The love of nature is religion, and that religion is poetry; these three things are one thing. This is the unspoken creed of haiku poets.

Regarding R. H. Blyth: Blyth is sometimes perilous, naturally, since he's a high-handed old poem himself, but he's also sublime - and who goes to poetry for safety anyway.

Why did I do such-and-such a thing?' is all very well. But what about 'How otherwise could I have done it?'.

People run away to be alone, ' he said. Some people had to be alone.

All good things comes to those who wait.

No one can endure his own solitude.

My parents were born and raised in Iowa and my two brothers were born in Iowa before my family moved to California where I was born so I still really feel like I have those Midwestern roots.

His voice was handsome and broken, like a cobblestone street.

From Ernest Hemingway's stories I learned to listen within my stories for what went unsaid by my characters.

I'm a firm supporter of the word polyamory. But that one is close to my heart.

Some part of us still believes that men should kill.

To prevent evil is the great end of government, the end for which vigilance and severity are properly employed.