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.

Passion does not make careful arguments: it declares itself, and that is enough.

They say the sky is the same everywhere. Travellers, the shipwrecked, exiles, and the dying draw comfort from the thought[.]

So we couldn't mingle with them, but we could eavesdrop. We got our knowledge that way--we caught it like germs.

Upstairs on a bus! It’s Unbelievable

An artist's sphere of influence is the world.

You can't visit readers where you think they are. You have to invite them home to where you are and try to lure them into your universe. That's the art of storytelling.

Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean you're wrong.

But God really did bless me, you know? He really said, All right. Come on. I'm still waiting for you. Get over here. Get over here.

Beauty without intelligence is like a hook without bait.

I always look forward to seeing a man who has more brains than me.

It is precisely because neither individuals nor small groups can be fully self-sufficient that cooperation is necessary to human survival and flourishing.