“Millions cheer the warriorspilling blood across the ringwhile the one who stands for peaceis ridiculed and shamed.”

Groping their way through suffocating shadows of political turmoil, economic oppression, military mayhem, starvation, and disease.

Writing for me is a form of spiritual discipline and creative vision, a means of being in the world and giving one’s love to it without compromise or dilution.

First gave in to the urge to pray to their sense of something greater than themselves and interpreted certain signs or events or silences as responses to those prayers.

Know yourself fearlessly (even quietly) for all the things you are.

A horn of plenty spills from your hands into the starved lives of millions.

Unless you are here: this garden refuses to exist. Pink dragonflies fall from the air and become scorpions scratching blood out of rocks.

Someone had to embrace positive beginnings before anyone could celebrate successful conclusions or continuations.

Art gives its vision to beauty not always recognized. And it surrenders freely — whatever power it possesses to every sincere soul that seeks it. But above all else–it presents us with the gift of ourselves.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela might be measured in part by the profound and unique gestures made by people in different countries to honor his life upon learning of his death.

With its leaves so rich and heavy with elation and its crimson face made brighter with visions of divinity the shadow of a certain rose looks just like an angel eating light.

The singular historic moment millions now celebrate could have been tragically lost to guerrilla decontextualization.

Yet continuously occupies the same bed or pathway, and accommodates life’s endings with the same musical grace with which it accommodates

Operating to implement a balance and give us an opportunity to turn the horrors we’ve forced upon each other into something more conducive to sustaining at least minimal degrees of sanity and love.

An outrageous instinct to love and be loved executed your brain every hour on the hour.

Dare to love yourself as if you were a rainbow with gold at both ends.

If I say your voice is an amber waterfall in which I yearn to burn each day, if you eat my mouth like a mystical rose with powers of healing and damnation, If I confess that your body is the only civilization I long to experience… would it mean that we are close to knowing something about love?

I have smuggled so many ingredients across so many borders, like shallot confit from Thailand, or a new sauce from New Orleans not approved by the FDA.

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

There are two kinds of comics; there are the ones who build bridges, and then there are the people who walk across the bridges as though they built them. The bridge builders are few and far between.

Furthermore, this pattern is seen across all the advanced economies, and isn’t just a feature of some special subset (e.g. the Anglo-Saxons).

Paul ripped off John’s right arm and used it to slap John across the face, then he said, “Those’re horrible, mate, just horrible, y’know.

Waiting is a huge part of being a refugee. You’re waiting at borders to get across. You’re waiting for transportation.

Music is, of course, a universal emotional experience, cutting across cultures and languages. I studied piano for ten years as a child and consider that experience one of the most valuable in my life.