it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

I don't ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.

Death may be due to a wide variety of diseases and disorders, but in every case the underlying physiological cause is a breakdown in the body's oxygen cycle.

Nothing, nothing, the whole long day, nothing.

Long experience has told me that to be criticized is not always to be wrong.

It would be futile to attempt to fit women into a masculine pattern of attitudes, skills and abilities . . .

Gentleness is the outgrowth of benignity.

When I dance, it's incredible. I can't describe it, there's no words. You just tap into your mojo and you just go.

We cannot afford four more years of this misguided socialist policies from President Obama and his administration.

Be persistent. Understand the ways in which your hard work is going to be necessary to achieve the goals that you want.

The easier it is to do something, the harder it is to change the way you do it.