You are completely at choice who you will be today in your interactions with others. Compassionate, kind, giving and forgiving will create one set of probabilities; angry, judgmental, critical and defensive will create another one altogether.

Today is a day for sober and mature reflection, not glee. Mindless celebration is both spiritually inappropriate and politically naive.

Some professional writers write everyday no matter what and perhaps that's the way it should be done, but it's not the way I do it. If I'm not pregnant with words and I'm not in labor with them, I don't even try to bring them forth because they won't be any good anyway. Once I'm ready to deliver, it's like being pregnant. I've got to find a typewriter or a piece of paper. The only words that have ever had any possible value to others seem to have been those words that just had to come out.

We're often afraid to do anything unless we know we can do it extremely well. But we get to Carnegie Hall by practicing. I remember how freeing it was several years ago to read in an interview with Joan Baez that some of Bob Dylan's early songs weren't so wonderful. We have this image of genius springing fully grown out of Zeus' forehead.

The only thing missing in any situation is that in which you are not giving

Once we reach a certain age, we tend to recalibrate our expectations. We expect less from the world once we've seen it up close.

Every bird that sings, sings for you. Every breeze that blows, blows for you. Every sunray shines for you. If you only knew how loved you are.