If I had to give up reading or give up listening to music, I suspect I'd stick with the music.

Ask her what she craved, and she'd get a little frantic about things like books, the woods, music. Plants and the seasons. Also freedom.

We are not strong enough to stand up against endless grief, And yet pain is the constant drone of life. So if we are to have any happiness at all, it is only in the passing instant.

She always carried a book, though, in case she needed to read a few pages to avoid unwanted conversation.

Claim your space. Draw a circle of light around it. Push back against the dark. Don't just survive. Celebrate.

Thinking: this journey will be the axle of my life.

All I can say is that we are mistaken to gouge such a deep rift in history that the things old men and old women know have become so useless as to be not worth passing on to grandchildren.

Well, I'm a slow writer. For me, a good day is a page, maybe a page and a half. I'd love to be more efficient, but I am not.

I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it.

A lizard in the spring - hear his darling sing. A bird with wings to fly - go back to his darling weep and moan till he dies. A mole in the ground - root a mountain down.

He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.

Why was it that women were expected to restrain our every passion for the sake of propriety, but men couldn't do it even for the sake of the women they loved?

Don't worry. Worry is useless. I worried anyway

Love is all right, as things go, but lovers can be a terrible waste of a girl's time.

Numerous studies have shown how when one person in a romantic coupling gets depressed, the other becomes more depressed.

Just previous to the birth of my little son, my mind gave way and my child was born in the asylum for the insane at Stockton, Cal. My boy was buried there.

We live in imaginary, virtual worlds created by corporations that profit from our deception.

The deeper inner teachings are presented to very few because few would understand them. The exoteric teachings are presented to many.

Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - a house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

Mirth is God's medicine; everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety-all the rust of life- ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth.

Everything is sacred and nothing is sacred.