There was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world.

I have a little dog who likes to nap with me.
He climbs on my body and puts his face in my neck.
He is sweeter than soap.
He is more wonderful than a diamond necklace,
which can't even bark.

You can have the other words -- chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.

All eternity is in the moment.

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.

Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is neither conscious or unconscious.

You can fool a lot of yourself but you can't fool the soul.

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.

Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Don't Hesitate).

I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us.

There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?

It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning -- it'll be gone.

Drive down any road,

take a train or an airplane
across the world, leave
your old life behind,

die and be born again~
wherever you arrive
they'll be there first,

glossy and rowdy
and indistinguishable.
The deep muscle of the world.

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.

Words have not only a definition... but also the felt quality of their own kind of sound.

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.

Don't we all die someday and someday comes all too soon? What will you do with your own wild, glorious chance at this thing we call life.

Sunrise What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever you want, it is happiness, it is another one of the ways to enter fire.

I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. We don't have to rely totally on experience if we can do things in our imagination.... It's the only way in which you can live more lives than your own. You can escape your own time, your own sensibility, your own narrowness of vision.