“You can never know enough, never work enough, never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough.”

At least half of your mind is always thinking, I’ll be leaving; this won’t last. It’s a good Buddhist attitude. If I were a Buddhist, this would be a great help. As it is, I’m just sad.

Everything depends on liking the people and trusting the people. You have to assume that whatever they do will be as good as you want the thing to be and just go ahead with that.

Do you remember when they taught cursive in schools? I think they don’t anymore. But I still enjoy it – just the physical act and all the – the whole business of making a thing out of language.

Desire doubled is love and love doubled is madness.

We participate in the creation of the world by decreating ourselves.

Meanwhile music pounded / across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being / a self in a song.

No need to fear death. There will be a tunnel and light.

Philosophy – hopeless. Yet it gives me hope.

Myths are stories about people who become too big for their lives temporarily, so that they crash into other lives or brush against gods. In crisis their souls are visible.

I don’t read reviews and I don’t know what to do with opinions, so I just lose them. They take up space, they become a process of manufacturing a persona, which I want to avoid.

Here we go mother on the shipless ocean. Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.

Up against another human being one’s own procedures take on definition.

A page with a poem on it is less attractive than a page with a poem on it and some tea stains.

Sometimes I dream a sentence and write it down. It’s usually nonsense, but sometimes it seems a key to another world.

Could you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me. Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time.

Caught between the tongue and the taste.

Some goals are not going to fulfill you. Choose goals that you value and care about.

Christianity has basically communicated to men that the reason God put you on this Earth is to be a good boy. Mind your manners, be a nice guy. That’s soul killing!

The aim of spiritual formation is not behavior modification but the transformation of all those aspects of you and me where behavior comes from…Circumcision of the heart.

The fact is I don’t lead a simple enough inner life. I indulge in excesses, bacchanalia of the spirit. Perhaps I identify too much with everything I read and study. Someone like Dostoevsky still shatters me.

Of course, we do the righteous deed because of our redemption, not for our redemption.

Human life and objects and trees vibrate with mysterious meanings, which can be deciphered like cuneiform writing.

I’m practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word.

Rely only on yourself; it is a common proverb.