To be a warrior is to learn to be genuine in every moment of your life.

The bad news is you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there's no ground.

To be a spiritual warrior, one must have a broken heart; without a broken heart and the sense of tenderness and vulnerability, your warriorship is untrustworthy.

In the garden of gentle sanity, May you be bombarded by coconuts of wakefulness.

We are always in transition. If you can just relax with that, you'll have no problem.

We cannot change the way the world is, but by opening ourselves to the world as it is, we may find that gentleness, decency and bravery are available - not only to us, but to all human beings.

You are sitting on the earth and you realize that this earth deserves you and you deserve this earth. You are there - fully, personally, genuinely.

A great deal of the chaos in the world occurs because people don't appreciate themselves.

The emphasis on practice is because it is the only time in your life you can steer your karmic situation.

Gentle day's flower - The hummingbird competes With the stillness of the air.

We are threatened by the now so we jump to the past or the future.

Life curses some poor people with the love of luxury, while it blesses some with the very same thing.

Is cruelty still cruel if it is necessary? Is cruelty still cruel if it is part of a lie?

Tell me what you'll do if you're captured by the coyotes... Well, that might work, but does your mother live near here?

There is no medicine to cure a fool!

D and D: a role-playing game played only by very cool guys.

Confidence is a lot of this game or any game. If you don't think you can, you won't.

You go in and meet the head of BBC One and get an assurance about not dumbing down. And then, of course a few months later, he's been replaced by someone you haven't met.

Your life's short, don't ever question the length / It's cool to cry, don't ever question your strength.

I'd always want to decorate my bedroom. I needed visuals and to be stimulated by things. I'm still like that. It's the way I see the world.

Ko Un is a crucial poet for the twenty-first century, and this is an enormously fresh and vivid translation.