“Nature’s silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.”

The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.

We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.

The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.

Adverbs are a sign that you’ve used the wrong verb.

You can serve or you can sing, and wreck your heart in prayer, working the world’s hard work.

We live in all we seek.

He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know.

Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand – that of finding a workable compromise between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.

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.

No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.

Write about winter in the summer.

I wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing.

The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.

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.

Caring passionately about something isn’t against nature, and it isn’t against human nature. It’s what we’re here to do.

You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.

I love my blocks of marble, always piling up in the yard like a flock of sheep.

Don’t be discouraged by writer’s block. Writer’s block just means you need to listen to other music.

I don’t leave my neighborhood. I don’t go anywhere. There are four blocks I live in and there are two coffee shops, one at each end of the block… so I don’t do much driving…

I am very proud of the role I played in getting legal equality for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and in helping get rid of the prejudice by being visible about it, helping to block the conviction of Bill Clinton of impeachment.

The body is the prop for the soul. So why not let the body be propped by a wall or a block?

I want to challenge those who aim to block change, stop development and restrict success. I want to challenge the caution that strangles risk-takers and go-getters.

I embrace everybody, but you work everybody and each song at a time to who it is for. I believe that’s how you build a palace. You build a palace one block at a time and then you’ll have what you want. That’s how it goes.

The basic building block of peace and security for all peoples is economic and social security, anchored in sustainable development. It is a key to all problems. Why? Because it allows us to address all the great issues-poverty, climate, environment and political stability-as parts of the whole.