Existence itself is nothing if not an amazement. Good poems restore amazement.

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.

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.

Passion does not make careful arguments: it declares itself, and that is enough.

We must never forget our teachers, our lecturers and our mentors. In their individual capacities have contributed to our academic, professional and personal development.

When one is a stranger to oneself, then one is estranged from others, too.

There is not one standard definition of beauty or one perfect size.

Whenever I try to spell 'banana,' I feel stupid because I don't know when to end it.

A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else’s life is simply immoral.

We've got to stop thinking everybody who is Muslim is a terrorist.

I make no claim to being a business genius. You can make so much money in this business that it loses its value.

When I'm 70 I might be a man in a park just wandering around, speaking in tongues with kids throwing bread at me.

I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite - or too devout - to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life.

The constant effort towards population, which is found even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased.