A student brings something to discuss, saying, "I don't know whether this is really good, or whether I should throw it in the wastebasket." The assumption is that one or the other choice is the right move. No. Almost everything we say or think or do - or write - comes in that spacious human area bounded by something this side of the sublime and something above the unforgivable.

A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.

They miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind, "Who are you really, wanderer?"-- and the answer you have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around you is: "Maybe I'm a king.

You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.

...What you fear will not go away; it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That's the world, and we all live there.

A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.

You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about