Male initiation does not move toward machoism; on the contrary, it moves toward achieving a cultivated heart before we die.

There is no hierarchy in Japanese Buddhist poetry.

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

I think that poetry is important when you are shipwrecked, when the ordinary structures that hold you up are gone.

To be wild is not to be crazy or psychotic. True wildness is a love of nature, a delight in silence, a voice free to say spontaneous things, and an exuberant curiosity in the face of the unknown.

Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us.

... where a man's wound is, that is where his genius will be.