I think of a myth as a story that helps you explain all the different pieces of your life. In that broad sense, there is no way to live without mythology.

A gift that cannot be given away ceases to be a gift. The spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation.

The gift finds the man attractive who stands with an empty bowl he does not own.

An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn.

All that we make and do is shaped by the communities and traditions that contain us, not to mention by money, power, politics, and luck. And even should the artist or scientist think she has extracted herself from the world to stand alone in the studio, a tremendous array of faculties and mind-states may well attend her creativity.

We forgive when we give up attachment to our wounds.

Better to operate with detachment, then; better to have a way but infuse it with a little humor; best, to have no way at all but to have instead the wit constantly to make one's way anew from the materials at hand.