What happens when someone throws you against a wall or tells you you're a jackass or puts you down or calls you bad names? It goes into your body. We hold it in our body. If we don't have a way to let that go and release that, it becomes sickness eventually.

Terence McKenna says, "The culture is not your friend." I am not sure we can change this culture. But I think we can rise above it and create a new world. That's why I so deeply believe in alternative spaces. That's why I believe in the power of art and activism.

It is almost a guarantee that in the pursuit of security you will become more insecure. Inherent in the quest for security is its undoing.

You will touch this joy and you will suddenly know it is what you were looking for your whole life, but you were afraid to even acknowledge the absence because the hunger for it was so encompassing.

Our bodies are critical. If I learned anything from getting really bad cancer seven years ago, it's that your body is what you've got. If you don't take care of it, you're not going to be here.

I think the human species is very suicidal.

I can only describe it as: the whole experience was imprinted on my body. And when I started to write it, it just came from such a very, In The Body of the Worldvery physical... it just came from my body. I don't know how to explain it better than that. I guess my head was transmitting it. It was a very, very physical experience writing this book.