There are openings in our lives of which we know nothing.

You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life.

The heat of autumn is different from the heat of summer. One ripens apples, the other turns them to cider.

Zen pretty much comes down to three things -- everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.

How fragile we are, between the few good moments.

Habit, laziness, and fear conspire to keep us comfortably within the familiar.

How silently the heart pivots on its hinge.

Existence itself is nothing if not an amazement. Good poems restore amazement.

Something looks back from the trees, and knows me for who I am.

In sorrow, pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble.

You must try, the voice said, to become colder. I understood at once. It's like the bodies of gods: cast in bronze, braced in stone. Only something heartless could bear the full weight.

As we stood there, chest high in water, I felt like I was in the middle of my own romance novel.

Pain is the clarion of aliveness trumpeting that you are living in the marvelous tender cause of life!

You can’t rid yourself of freedom the way you’d rid yourself of lice, brother.

How can it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart as suddenly as she came? To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more.

... every writer I had ever known wrote his best work when he had his back up against the wall and thought he would never write another word.

Sometimes when I make a movie, my main goal is to show the movie to one particular director.

The auditorium, named after a dead Queens politician is windowless in honor of the secrecy in which he lived and, probably, the bank vaults he frequented.

The foundation of my beliefs is the same as it was when I was 10. Non-violence.

It's always about focusing not on the mistakes but on the lessons learned from them.

Love cannot be learned or taught. Love comes as Grace.