I would say that there exists a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves-we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together, we are each other's destiny.

Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?

This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attention.

Sing, if you can sing, and it not still be musical inside yourself.

I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery.

Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?

... Let us risk the wildest places, Lest we go down in comfort, and despair.