Traveling is my priority, because it drives the writing, so I teach around the travel, and sometimes the travel is the teaching.

I always tell my students, about the biggest baddest things in life you must try to write small and light, save the big writing for the unexpected tiny thing that always makes or breaks a story.

Dogs change lives. Half Buddha, half Bozo, they keep us tethered to the earth, and teach us to fly. Our dogs are our sanity keepers.

When I was a little kid, I used to walk miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles of railroad tracks.

I've been to a lot of school and read a lot of thick books, but at my very core there's a made-for-TV-movie mentality I don't think i will ever shake.

Movement helps keep me centered. I am a disaster, for instance, at sitting meditation, but I'm pretty decent at walking meditation.

Life gives us what we need when we need it; receiving what it gives us is a whole other thing.

I've always said the toughest thing about learning to feel your feelings is that then you have to feel your feelings.

Stillness is a harder concept for me than ecstasy, but I can imagine it best when I am fully present and paying strict attention to a place I am moving through.

One thing I'm always thinking about myself is what am I willing to make up? And the answer is not much.

It's September 21st, a day I love for the balance it carries with it.

The prevailin' weakness of most public men is to Slop Over!.... G. Washington never slopt over.

If a traveller does not meet with one who is his better, or his equal, let him firmly keep to his solitary journey; there is no companionship with a fool.

Every championship, by definition, is historic.

In a portrait, I’m looking for the silence in somebody.

There has never been a great film unless it was created in the spirit of the experimental filmmaker.

Seppuku is Japanese for ritual suicide. I thought, What a cute name for a coat.

Analyses of others are actually expressions of our own needs and values

My parents always raised us with the idea of having college in mind. You sort of need a college education. It's part of life. It's something that you do - like going to your prom.

You'll know what kind of bird I am when I fly over you.

...for everything has a trace of the divine in it.