A lake that is noisy cannot reflect anything

All land, no matter what has happened to it, has over it a grace, an absolutely persistent beauty.

The highest truth is to delete, not to add. To get rid of the things you believe in now. So empty yourself out totally and completely. All of your ideas, your feelings, all have to be emptied out of you. When you become totally and completely empty there is nothing you have to do to fill it up again. Emptiness is realization. Emptiness is Brahman. Emptiness is the Self. Emptiness is your real nature.

Silence is, after all, the context for the deepest appreciation of art: the only important evaluations are finally, personal, interior ones.

Philosophy can forsake too easily the details of experience… many writers and painters have demonstrated that thinking long about what art is or ought to be ruins the power to write or paint.

You can't talk about life without talking about politics. You have to have both. If you're just a political person, you're going to burn out. If you, as an artist, are just focused inward, you're going to eventually be irrelevant.

No place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.