The night before, I'd gone overboard with my Lila poems, and maybe it's true that I was hoping that in them he'd see the genius of me, the beauty of my words in his hands.

Have you ever watched a leaf leave a tree? It falls upward first, and then it drifts toward the ground, just as I find myself drifting towards you.

Nature is not the number-one mystery, I’ve learned. It’s the heart that takes top honors.

Forgiveness, which is the place that every story turns, the chance we give each other.

Beauty is the worst kind of lie.

His client needs him, he says. Needs him? But isn’t he needed at home?

The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.

We have not been created out of nothing, but from primeval "ur-matter, " atoms formed billions of years ago that have for a brief while been gathered into collections that think they are us.

I will never again look at the homeless people the way I did before entering Bowery Mission.

The conscious experience of being a subject arises when a single organism learns to enslave itself.

Nature is the art of God.

I'm pretty sure whoever said, people are wonderful spent very little time with people.

Today the vacuum [of space] is not regarded as empty. It is a sea of dynamic energy, like the spray of foam near a turbulent waterfall.

Where there is humility, there is no story.

If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I'm ready to start writing.

Cram as much pleasure as you can into life, and rail against the pain that you have to suffer as a result.