The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable chair, in a stuffy room, inside a building.

it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

I don't ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

You have the paintbrush in your hand, you can make the picture of your life brighter and bigger or duller and darker, it’s up to you.

A person is an entity of a sort to which the only proper and adequate way to relate is love.

Everyone should be comfy during the apocalypse.

It is better to have a meaningful life and make a difference than to merely have a long life.

Water colours are wet colours in water.

Universities are less constrained by authority and rigid doctrine in the United States than in most other societies, to my knowledge.

I never knew what basketball was. I started playing on the playground. People used to laugh at me and joke at me because I was so tall and I didn't know the game and couldn't play it.

The whole character of Justin and the club life he lives - I have no experience with it. It's really foreign to me, which is annoying, but that's just how it is.

One of the first things I bought when I made 'Roseanne Show' money was a farm in Iowa.

Real estate is the best investment in the world because it is the only thing they're not making any more.