There is no house like the house of belonging.

What if the world is holding its breath - waiting for you to take the place that only you can fill?

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

The antidote to exhaustion isn't rest. It's wholeheartedness.

Gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us.

To have a firm persuasion in our work - to feel that what we do is right for ourselves and good for the world at exactly the same time - is one of the great triumphs of human existence.

Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you.

Our work is to make ourselves visible in the world. This is the soul's individual journey, and the soul would much rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else's.

Enough. These few words are enough If not these few words, this breath If not this breath, this sitting here This opening to the life we have refused again and again Until now Until now.

I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the center of your longing.

The courageous conversation is the one you don't want to have.

Life's a queue of small irritations with the Last Door at the end.

All this under a magnificent blue sky.

A kid of your age—any kid—could get hold of matches if she wanted to, burn up the house or whatever. But not many do. Why would they want to?

Between thinking and seeing, there is a place called knowing.

Every thought, word, or deed, either purifies or pollutes the body.

Let me say to begin with: It is not neurotic to have conflict ... Conflicts within ourselves are an integral part of human life.

I have been extremely lucky with reviewers and critics throughout my career.

It is only the Negro leadership, the bourgeois, hand-picked, handful of Negroes who think that they're going to get some kind of respect, recognition, or protection from the Government.

In a Giraffe institution, the head nurse job would be to serve the nurses, not to control them. Teachers are there to serve the students, not control them.

I miss having someone to cuddle up and have an early night with. But I'm looking. Meanwhile, I'm having a few relationships that don't mean much.