The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular anything. It is simply to see what is there.

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.

Cry when you must. It relieves the soul of all pain.

The higher one sits, the greater the fear of fall.

...isn't it possible that advertising as a whole is a fantastic fraud, presenting an image of America taken seriously by no one, least of all the advertising men who create it?

The Cubist paintings in the Centre Pompidou in Paris were strange but amazing. The big fat magical cat said they made her eyes hurt.

How easy to be free. How strong we are when we have nothing to lose.

Some folks say that you can’t get rid of a problem until you shuck it. So, brother, let’s start shucking.

My former wife made me a millionaire. I used to have three million dollars.

The resort to human flesh, often after months of ever-increasing hunger pangs, appeared to be an animallike reaction without painful emotional overtones.

Always trust people and they may let you down. Always distrust people and you have let them down.

Examine the present and learn from the past to see how the future will unfold. Too often we just look at the present and base our actions solely on that.