We are here to witness the creation and to abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.

We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.

Noticing and remembering everything would trap bright scenes to light and fill the blank and darkening past which was already piling up behind me. The growing size of that blank and ever-darkening past frightened me; it loomed beside me like a hole in the air and battened on scraps of my life I failed to claim. If one day I forgot to notice my life, and be damned grateful for it, the blank cave would suck me up entire.

Write about winter in the summer.

No one can help you if you're stuck in a work. Only you can figure a way out, because only you can see the work's possibilities.

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.

Nature's silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.