Happiness doesn't require laughter, only well-being and a sense that the world is breaking someone else's heart, not mine.

Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world.

What an odd, ruminating, noisy, self-interrupting conversation we conduct with ourselves from birth to death.

I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace.

the biggest threat to the religious experience may well come from organized religion itself.

If cynicism is inevitable as one ages, so is the yearning for innocence. To children heaven is being an adult, and to adults heaven is being children again.

Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth. We walk through it, yell into it, rake leaves, wash the dog, and drive cars in it. We breathe it deep within us. With every breath, we inhale millions of molecules of sky, heat them briefly, and then exhale them back into the world.