Spend the afternoon, you can't take it with you.

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.

She looked away. Her attitude seemed to suggest that she had finished with him, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

Fear punches holes in your eyes so that you don't see the future clearly. Faith enlarges your vision to behold your destiny.

. “Love doesn’t please itself by seeking revenge. Love sacrifices itself for the good of others.

Suffering is nothing. It's all a matter of preventing those you love from suffering.

If Terri was upset about how silly she would look, her mother was completely undone. Seems she wanted Terri in her full natural bloom, not with any blooming flower.

I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

It is easier for a rich person to act on their principles than it is for someone with fewer choices (which is why it is all the more disappointing when a wealthy person plays to the crowd).

I just try and do the best with every role I get to do. Hopefully the experience in itself is a good experience and people will want to work with me.

Creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and often more accessible.