Poems are always interested in what Ivan Illich called 'shadow work,' not least because that is no small part of their own way of working.

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.

I don't think that we should waste our time criticizing other people. Self-criticism allows us to be the best version of ourselves.

Self-discipline, self-realization and self-reliance.

If you do not do the thing you fear, the fear controls your life.

Laughter is the most beautiful and beneficial therapy God ever granted humanity.

The stability of modern governments above the ancient, and the accuracy of modern philosophy, have improved, and probably will still improve, by similar gradations.

Nothing can be so quick and sudden as the operations of the mind, especially when hope, or fear, or jealousy, to which the other two are but journeymen, set it to work.

You can say what you like about long dresses, but they cover a multitude of shins.

Divorce is the psychological equivalent of a triple coronary by pass. After such a monumental assault on the heart, it takes years to amend all the habits and attitudes that led up to it.

I wasnt a model schoolboy. Of course, I was forced to sit through Shakespeare and I really got into some of it, though it depended on who was reading it out.

It is distraction, not meditation, that becomes habitual; interruption, not continuity; spasmodic, not constant toil.