“The present is always changing the past.”

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot.

For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.

If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black.

The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.

People become concerned with being more humble than other people.

The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.

Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.

Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.

A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

I have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware.

Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction.

We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.

Human desire tends to be insatiable.

I’m not telling women to be like men. I’m telling us to evaluate what men and women do in the workforce and at home without the gender bias.

Change doesn’t have to be hard, and healing doesn’t have to hurt. Surely by now you know that every thing happens for a reason! There is something better awaiting you on the other side of this.

I am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.

We should live out our particular brand of faith, sure – but we should never force our brand of faith upon anyone else. All violence starts with the desire to change others and then never, ever ends.

Poetry and language are often at the heartbeat of movements for change.

The Red Army and Navy and the whole Soviet people must fight for every inch of Soviet soil, fight to the last drop of blood for our towns and villages…onward, to victory!

Democracy, Republic: What do these words signify? What have they changed in the world? Have men become better, more loyal, kinder? Are the people happier? All goes on as before, as always. Illusions, illusions.

You can change environments, but until you change yourself, nothing else will ever change.