There is no way of making a hedge grow like pruning it. There is no way of making sex interesting like repressing it.

Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.

For a decision-the freest of my actions just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me.

We must see that consciousness is neither an isolated soul nor the mere function of a single nervous system, but of that totality of interrelated stars and galaxies which makes a nervous system possible.

You can't make love without art.

This is what Zen means by being detached—not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked, and through whom the experiences of the world pass like the reflections of birds flying over water.

What are we saying when we say now, something is holy? That means you should take a different attitude to what you are doing than if you were, for example, doing it for kicks.