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.

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

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.

Regarding R. H. Blyth: For translations, the best books are still those by R. H. Blyth. . . .

Loneliness in a crowd of people was the worst kind of loneliness, but she couldn't help it.

The ultimate form of our technological achievement will be identical to the beginning state of this nature.

here it was the whole world wrapped inside my armsAnd I let it all slip away

Speculation in land may be necessary to capitalism, but speculative orgies periodically become a quagmire of destruction for capital itself.

The truly enlightened are not necessarily very religious. Religon is a convienent description to take care of our fears, to passify us.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must not walk in fear of one another. We must not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.

In the olden days, of course, cigarette companies would pay to have their product advertised in movies and to have actors smoke cigarettes.[Ronald Reagan used to do it.]

I've always loved rhyming. I love language.

This is just too awful. Such an amazing talent [like George Michael] gone too soon. Wham was part of the soundtrack to my teenage years.

The threat to globalization is not the wasted American dollars but Washington's readiness to mix US commercial interests with its self-appointed role as global protector.