Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.

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.

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

Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.

Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.

The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.

First thoughts have tremendous energy. The internal censor usually squelches them, so we live in the realm of second and third thoughts, thoughts on thought, twice and three times removed from the direct connection of the first fresh flash.