“I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind.”

The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.

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.

I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.

Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.

You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.

You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.

We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.

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…give it, give it all, give it now.

People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.

I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.

The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.

You can’t test courage cautiously.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.

The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful

It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.

Then when the fugitive word was least expecting it I would suddenly turn the full blaze of my attention back onto it catching the culprit in the beam of my mental torch before it could sneak off again into the darkness.

Happiness is being on the beam with life – to feel the pull of life

Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.

A beam in darkness: let it grow.

The morning beam is telling me that it’s action time!