There is nothing intrinsically more beautiful or poetical about the moon than about a dunghill; if anything, the contrary, for the latter is full of life and warmth and energy.

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

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.

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.

Becoming the opponent means you should put yourself in an opponent's place and think from the opponent's point of view.

The events of the Titanic disaster can be seen as a symbol of what happens through overconfidence in technology, complacence, and a mindset of profits over people's safety.

Unlike Elise, who could discover parts of a person they didn't even know were absent, you specialized in tangible, but that, I feared, was only a matter of time.

It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.

I train the same way as I've always trained, even before I was champion. That's the difference, I train like a challenger.

I think my primary audience is in some sense an adult audience, because I think that will then have a knock-on effect for children.

Muse, time has taught me that all metaphysical systems, even historical facts given as truths, are hardly that, so I amuse myself with more agreeable lies; I no longer read anything but novels.

I think with a lot of producers, they think computers can create the best drum track, or guitar track and it comes off as too artificial.

The calendar has a magic that makes us imagine a memory can be resurrected and revived, but nothing returns.

When you've got a Chautauqua in your head, it's extremely hard not to inflict it on innocent people.