When you are feeling too dull and too domesticated get on a horse, sit tall in the saddle, and for a moment live in a world that feels like risk and adventure.

Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness... bright ideas are preceded by a gestation period that is interior, murky, and completely necessary.

Life is what we make of it. Whether we conceive of an inner god force or an other, outer God, doesn't matter. Relying on that force does.

Next to Morning Pages and Artist Dates, the most potent tool for contacting inner guidance and creativity is walking.

We go into parenting, and we discover that we don't have the answers. We are at a loss.

At root, a pearl is a 'disturbance' a beauty caused by something that isn't supposed to be there, about which something needs to be done. It is the interruption of equilibrium that creates beauty. Beauty is a response to provocation, to intrusion. ... The pearl's beauty is made as a result of insult.

Sometimes the dying live more fiercely and wisely than the rest of us. (146)