We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy.
I consider myself kind of a reporter -- one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write.
So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.
I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things.
There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay.
There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty.
My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
To tell you the truth, I believe everything - tigers, trees, stones - are sentient in one way or another. You'd never catch me idly kicking a stone, for example.
There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?
When I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.
Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird -- equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.