Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetic flowers. They lengthened and spread, added plane to plane in an awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even stones – maybe only the stones – understood.
The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful?
Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.
At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it.
Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation’s short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.
Caring passionately about something isn’t against nature, and it isn’t against human nature. It’s what we’re here to do.
There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.
Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.
Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.
Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensibl e earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see.
One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.
I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day, as dolphins burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive.
Art is like an ill-trained Labrador retriever that drags you out into traffic.
The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.
I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.
An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell? No, said the priest, not if you did not know. Then why, asked the Inuit earnestly, did you tell me?
Make connections; let rip; and dance where you can.
Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?
The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.
Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block.