The women that I met were exceptional, extraordinary - tremendous purity, tremendous gentleness, self-giving and power.

If you have the sense of participation in sports or athletics, of being a player, then you are not really into the Zen mind. In Zen mind there is no sense of self in the play.

At the beginning and the middle and the end of all things, there is only the perfection of enlightenment that is nirvana.

The smoke from the fire passes through the building and the soot affixes itself to the walls. The smoke passes through the air and keeps going - liberation.

The burden you are carrying around is the burden of self. You seek release from that. You want to let it all go. You want to forget who you are and what you are. You wish to be the whole universe, infinite, endless.

Nature soothes us. Nature heals us, and something more, the woods are a place of power.

In one particular chapter in Ulysses, James Joyce imitates every major writing style that's been used by English and American writers over the last 700 years - starting with Beowulf and Chaucer and working his way up through the Renaissance, the Victorian era and on into the 20th century.