“Before the moon I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman’s power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon.”

First sentences are doors to worlds.

No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.

If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.

Safety lies in catering to the in-group. We are not all brave. All I would ask of writers who find it hard to question the universal validity of their personal opinions and affiliations is that they consider this:

By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.

People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.

We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first.

Absolute freedom is absolute responsibility.

My tentacles are coming out of the pigeonhole in all directions.

As men have done to women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation – you may hate it or deify it; but in either case you have denied its spiritual equality and its human reality.

Injustice makes the rules, and courage breaks them.

A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child. . . that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.

The presence of the trees was very strong…The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence: the awe of them came on me, the religion.

It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.

When we sit in meditation and hear a sound, we think, ‘Oh, that sound’s bothering me.’ If we see it like this, we suffer. But if we investigate a little deeper,

The loneliness caused by not hearing Ren’s voice… I felt it deep in the night. I felt it deeper than anyone else. Even now at times I look back.

And what does the beach knows of depths, the cold, the currents just there, where-do you see it? – Where the water turns a deeper blue.

In silence a question has great power, because in silence a question will always lead you deeper into your experience. If there is no grounding in silence, a spiritual question is going to lead you into your mind.

Somewhere deeper than where they put your heart.

People love science and all it offers, but they also feel a calling in themselves to the sense of what’s deeper.

Seek a reality deeper than the changing forms.

The anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the reach of despair.