“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.”

The secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all.

These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.

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.

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

I trust kids far more than I do adults. Kids give you the honest opinion. They tell the truth.

I think that’s why my career is going to be so long: Because I haven’t given people everything.

we are here to give

The women who don’t seek attention are usually the women you need to be giving your attention to.

I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.

To give someone a piece of your heart, is worth more than all the wealth in the world.

It is not the genius at the top giving directions that makes people great. It is great people that make the guy at the top look like a genius.

Intense love does not measure it just gives.