I think of the trees and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season, how without grief (it seems) they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep.... Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.

I sometimes imagine that as one grows older one comes to live a role which as a young person one merely 'played.

The beginner hugs his infant poem to him and does not want it to grow up. But you may have to break your poem to remake it.

The ambience here is order and beauty. That is what frightens me when I am first alone again. I feel inadequate. I have made an open place, a place for meditation. What if I cannot find myself inside it?

have the courage to write whatever your dream is for yourself.

we are never done with thinking about our parents, I suppose, and come to know them better long after they are dead than we ever did when they were alive.

There were moments ... when it seemed that all one could be asked was just to keep the ashtrays clean, the bed made, the wastebaskets emptied, as if one never got to the real things because of the constant exhausting battle to keep ordinary life from falling apart.