When I recite poems onstage, I put myself into the very personal struggle and it grants tremendous perspective. At the same time you get another perspective on the poem you're reciting.

What if the world is holding its breath - waiting for you to take the place that only you can fill?

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

The antidote to exhaustion isn't rest. It's wholeheartedness.

Gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us.

To have a firm persuasion in our work - to feel that what we do is right for ourselves and good for the world at exactly the same time - is one of the great triumphs of human existence.

Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you.

Our work is to make ourselves visible in the world. This is the soul's individual journey, and the soul would much rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else's.

Enough. These few words are enough If not these few words, this breath If not this breath, this sitting here This opening to the life we have refused again and again Until now Until now.

I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the center of your longing.

The courageous conversation is the one you don't want to have.

The Bible is not religion, nor are the Vedas. The Torah is not religion, nor is the Quran, or any other scripture on earth.

In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

Independence means you decide according to the law and the facts.

Times of calamity and distress have always been producers of the greatest men. The hardest steel is produced from the hottest fire; the brightest star shreds the darkest night.

The theory of the free press is not that the truth will be presented completely or perfectly in any one instance, but that the truth will emerge from free discussion

All I really want is enough to live on, a little house in the country... and a tree in the garden with seven of my enemies hanging in it.

There are only three ways by which any individual can get wealth — by work, by gift or by theft. And, clearly, the reason why the workers get so little is that the beggars and thieves get so much.

One must keep repeating the Truth.

For this reason, if you believe proverbs, let me tell you the common one: "It is unlucky to marry in May.

Even if we're far apart, let's have hope and keep working hard.