The great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body.

What if the world is holding its breath - waiting for you to take the place that only you can fill?

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

The antidote to exhaustion isn't rest. It's wholeheartedness.

Gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us.

To have a firm persuasion in our work - to feel that what we do is right for ourselves and good for the world at exactly the same time - is one of the great triumphs of human existence.

Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you.

Our work is to make ourselves visible in the world. This is the soul's individual journey, and the soul would much rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else's.

Enough. These few words are enough If not these few words, this breath If not this breath, this sitting here This opening to the life we have refused again and again Until now Until now.

I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the center of your longing.

The courageous conversation is the one you don't want to have.

elliptical, adj.The kiss I like the most is one of the slow ones. It’s as much breath as touch, as much no as yes. You lean in from the side, and I have to turn a little to make it happen.

Learning what you don't want is how you know what you do want.

Dare to love yourself as if you were a rainbow with gold at both ends.

With both agents and publishers hungry for bestsellers, literature will have to end up as a cottage industry.

Is there anything men take more pains about than to render themselves unhappy?

I didn't grow up eating meat - I was a vegetarian until I was 18.

Presidential ambition is a disease that can only be cured by embalming fluid.

I'm a darned good listener.

Boss: I just heard that light travels faster than sound. I'm wondering if I should shout when I speak, just so my lips appear to sync-up with my words.

There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefitted.