If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.

Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce. In summer, we work hard to make a tidy garden, bordered by pansies with rows or clumps of columbine, petunias, bleeding hearts. Then we find ourselves longing for the forest, where everything has the appearance of disorder; yet we feel peaceful there.

To stay close and intimate with experience is to stay close to the mind; the nitty gritty mind of the way things really are.

Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.

Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath.

Don't let yourself be thrown away....Continue on no matter what....Continue to make a positive effort for the good.

In writing with detail, you are turning to face the world. It is a deeply political act, because you are not staying in the heat of your own emotions. You are offering up some good solid bread for the hungry.