You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.

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.

Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle.

In the great green room, there was a telephoneAnd a red balloonAnd a picture of a cat jumping over the moon...

A woman loves purposeful commitment.

Mathematicians do not study objects, but the relations between objects.

Men dissimulate their dearest, most constant, and most virtuous inclination from weakness and a fear of being condemned.

If I get up every day with the optimism that I have the capacity for growth, then that’s success for me.

I'd rather be really good at something or not do it at all.

There aren't enough girl drummers.

Nothing infuriates an academic more than a talented and successful colleague.