“Or maybe it’s about the wonderful things that may happen if you break the ropes that are holding you.”

“Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.”

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

“When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider the orderliness of the world.”

“Invention hovers always a little above the rules.”

“All eternity is in the moment.”

“When death comes…. I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what it’s going to be like, that cottage of darkness?”

“Do you think the wren ever dreams of a better house?”

“that your spirit grow in curiosity, that your life be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as you feel how it actually is, that we—so clever, and ambitious, and selfish, and unrestrained— are only one design of the moving, the vivacious many.”

“that your spirit grow in curiosity, that your life be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as you feel how it actually is, that we—so clever, and ambitious, and selfish, and unrestrained— are only one design of the moving, the vivacious many.”

Going to Walden is not so easy a thing As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult Trick of living, and finding it where you are.”

“to leap into it and hold on, connecting everything,”

“ANGELS You might see an angel anytime and anywhere. Of course you have to open your eyes to a kind of second level, but it’s not really hard. The whole business of what’s reality and what isn’t has never been solved and probably never will be. So I don’t care to be too definite about anything. I have a lot of edges called Perhaps and almost nothing you can call Certainty. For myself, but not for other people. That’s a place you just can’t get into, not entirely anyway, other people’s heads. I’ll just leave you with this. I don’t care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s enough to know that for some people they exist, and that they dance.”

“And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you finally figured out what beauty is for?

“Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither a child, nor a servant of the hours. It is a third self, occasional in some of us, tyrant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity. Intellectual”

“Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.”

“But literature, the best of it, does not aim to be literature. It wants and strives, beyond that artifact part of itself, to be a true part of the composite human record—that is, not words but a reality.”

“Then I remember: death comes before the rolling away of the stone.”

“The multiplicity of forms! The hummingbird, the fox, the raven, the sparrow hawk, the otter, the dragonfly, the water lily! And on and on. It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.”

“There are as many worlds as there are imaginers.

"A day without sunshine is like, you know, night."

"Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way."

"I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks."

"I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy."

"It's pain that changes our lives."

"I saw the movie, 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' and was surprised because I didn't see any tigers or dragons. And then I realized why: they're crouching and hidden."

"Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent."

"Boy, those French! They have a different word for everything."

"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."

"Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol."

"I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you're an idiot."

"You know that look that women get when they want to have sex? Me neither."

"... you're nuts but you're welcome here."

"...it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart."

"We've had some fun tonight...considering we're all gonna die someday."

"Be so good they can't ignore you."

"I believe in equality. Equality for everybody. No matter how stupid they are or how superior I am to them."

"First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me."

"How is it possible to miss a woman whom you kept at a distance, so that when she was gone you would not miss her?"

"I've heard lots of people lie to themselves but they never fool anyone."

"She has learned that her body is precious and it mustn't be offered carelessly ever again, as it holds a direct connection to her heart."

"I gave my cat a bath the other day...they love it. He sat there, he enjoyed it, it was fun for me. The fur would stick to my tongue, but other than that..."

"The banjo is such a happy instrument--you can't play a sad song on the banjo - it always comes out so cheerful."

"I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart."

"I've got to keep breathing. It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't."

"I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper."

"Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration."

"The operation was a success, but I'm afraid the doctor is dead."

"Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes."

"She tried to get even with him through psychological warfare but couldn't, because he didn't care."