Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.

Allow yourself to release the emotions you have struggled all your life to contain.

There's a part of every living thing that wants to become itself: the tadpole into the frog, the chrysalis into the butterfly, a damaged human being into a whole one.That is spirituality.

There is a comfort in knowing that you don’t have to pretend anymore, that you are going to do everything within your power to heal.

What would people look like if we could see them as they are, soaked in honey, stung and swollen, reckless, pinned against time?

It's impossible to feel good about yourself if you are doing things that you aren't proud of. . . . It's essential that you . . . [do] things you can respect and admire.

I live in Santa Cruz. I moved here in 1974 and couldn't leave.

Everyone has the right to tell the truth about her own life.

So much inspires me. People living their lives with courage, beauty of all kinds, nature in all its aspects, people I love and people I hardly know, and, of course, other poets.

Poetry is the most intimate of all writing. I want to speak first from me to myself and then from me to you.

If you’ve managed to do one good thing, the ocean doesn’t care. But when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth, the earth, ever so slightly, fell toward the apple as well.

Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.

The goal is not to get into a relationship; the goal is to be in a relationship.

Legislators have a formal set of responsibilities to work together, but there's no hierarchy.

Infinite riches in a little room.

But I decided I wanted more education and I had to make a choice between starting law school, which was interesting to me, and going for a graduate degree in engineering.

Virtually always I get my best pictures when everybody thinks the shoot's done.

I resented my mother for guessing my innermost secrets. She was like God, everywhere at once knowing everything.

Compulsive modernization is the insatiable desire to change and grow.

Life is an improvisation. You have no idea what's going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along.

When you Rectify your Relationship with the Creator, He Rectifies your relationship with All of the Creation.