A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.

I fall in love all the time. With music, film, poetry. A smile. A bum. But rarely the whole of someone.

Every star may be a sun to someone.

Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You’ll find what you need to find. Just read.

In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.

Will you tolerate
the strangeness inside of me,
the quirks of my soul?

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.

Live, and be happy, and make others so.

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.

Reading, like speech, is an ancient, preliterate craft. We read the tracks and scat of animals, the depth and lustre of their coats … We read the horns of sheep, the teeth of horses. We read the weights and measures of the wind, the flight of birds, the surface of the sea, snow, fossils, broken rocks ….. We also read, of course, the voices that we hear. We read the speech of jays, ravens, hawks, frogs, wolves, and , in infinite detail, the voices, faces, gestures, coughs and postures of other human beings. This is a serious kind of reading, and it antedates all but the earliest, most involuntary form of writing, which is the leaving of prints and traces, the making of tracks.

I can’t think of anything but nights with you. I want them warm and silvery, when we can be together all our lives.

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.

Worry is a total waste of time. It doesn’t change anything. All it does is steal your joy and keep you very busy doing nothing.