Zen is less the study of doctrine than a set of tools for discovering what can be known when the world is looked at with open eyes.

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.

More dragons incoming...

You can't point a camera at someone and find out what's in their head. But it does the next best thing - it lets you speculate.

Freedom from mental distraction equals power.

There's no bigger surprise than to be tooling along at 200 MPH and suddenly get hit from the rear

If you drill, there's going to be a spill. It's axiomatic.

Losers never know why they are losing. They will mention injuries, the officiating, the weather and bad breaks.

For every habit we have, for every experience we go through over and over, for every pattern we repeat, there is a NEED WITHIN US for it.

As you get older, life gets harder if you're not applying spiritual truths.

They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!

For peace, with justice and honor, is the fairest and most profitable of possessions, but with disgrace and shameful cowardice, it is the most infamous and harmful of all.