You say to yourself, Well, this poem isn't going to be any good, but I'll write it anyway.

The inner boy in a messed-up family may keep on being shamed, invaded, disappointed, and paralyzed for years and years. "I am a victim," he says, over and over; and he is. But that very identification with victimhood keeps the soul house open and available for still more invasions. Most American men today do not have enough awakened or living warriors inside to defend their soul houses. And most people, men or women, do not know what genuine outward or inward warriors would look like, or feel like.

All of Japan once a year will get up on their rooftops, because that's the night that the shepherd boy from one side of the Milky Way gets to meet the weaver girl on the other side of the Milky Way. They all get up on their roofs and watch that night. So they long for 365 days and then on the 365th night, they see the result of that longing.

As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression.

It's good to have poems that begin with tea and end with God.

By the time a man is 35 he knows that the images of the right man, the tough man, the true man which he received in high school do not work in life.

In the society that has replaced the paternalistic society, women are able to develop their independent and social energies much more. That is good.