When you are present, the world is truly alive.

That's very nice if they want to publish you, but don't pay too much attention to it. It will toss you away. Just continue to write.

Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.

Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce.

Never underestimate people. They do desire the cut of truth.

Talk when you talk, walk when you walk, and die when you die.

Read books. They are good for us.

Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that's why we decide we're done. It's getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.

When you are present, the world is truly alive.

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.

A writer's job is to give the reader a larger vision of the world.

Failure is what we're all running from, we're always running toward success with failure at our back.

I consider writing practice a true Zen practice because it all comes back at you. You can't fool anyone because it's on the page.

I feel that 'The Great Failure' is really a book written out of great love and a willingness to face all of who a human being is.

If you feel bored or uncomfortable as you're writing, ask yourself what's bothering you and write about that. Sometimes your creative energy is like water in a kinked hose, and before thoughts can flow on the topic at hand, you have to straighten the hose by attending to whatever is preoccupying you.

Our job as writers is to listen, to come home to the four corners of the earth.

The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.

There's no such thing as a writer's block. If you're having trouble writing, well, pick up the pen and write. No matter what, keep that hand moving. Writing is really a physical activity.

When you bring the darkness to the table, it doesn't rule you or hurt other people, but when we keep it secret, it's dangerous.

When you write what you know, you stay in control. One of the first things I encourage my writing students to do is to lose control - say what they want to say, break structure.

Whether you're keeping a journal or writing as a meditation, it's the same thing. What's important is you're having a relationship with your mind.

Women are wonderful, but they get so caught up about their body. We need to unhook from worrying so much. When I don't feel good, I look in the mirror and think I look fat and miserable. But when I feel good and whole, I'm not worried about my body because I'm living in it. It doesn't become an object.

Women need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There's something about holding that richness.

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes everything is an emergency.

Stress is a confused state. It believes that everything is an emergency.

We are each a concert reverberating with our whole lives and reflecting and amplifying the world around us.

Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth a forgetting of the breath.

Be tough in the way a blade of grass is rooted willing to lean and at peace with what is around it.

Wait until you are hungry to say something until there is an aching in you to speak.

The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.

Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it

This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.

Choose your tools carefully, but not so carefully that you get uptight or spend more time at the stationery store than at your writing table.

A writer must say yes to life.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.

Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.

Crying over what's gone won't find the present.

The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

It is certain, indeed, that the sacred writers were apt to make great allowances for people with empty stomachs, and though I am well aware that the present profane ones think this very reprehensible, I venture to agree with the sacred writers.

It also allows you to look as though you're not particularly from the present, future or past, either.

And for myself, I think for the present He is calling me to another land; but how long shall be my abode, or what employment He has for me there, I know not, for I cannot think He is taking me there to live and lurk only.

It is my intention to present - through the medium of photography - intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators.

I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.

The present government is very insistent that business sponsorship should replace government sponsorship of the arts. Business sponsorship won't happen unless you make tax concessions, which they won't.