“Go to the object. Leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Do not impose yourself on the object. Become one with the object. Plunge deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there.”

With every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow.

Harvest moon: around the pond I wander and the night is gone.

Do not resemble me-Never be like a musk melon Cut in two identical halves.

Traveler’s heart. Never settled long in one place. Like a portable fire.

First snow-falling-on the half-finished bridge.

All my friends / viewing the moon – / an ugly bunch.

When composing a verse let there not be a hair’s breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.

Not to think of yourself / as someone who did not count — / Festival of the Souls.

The desire to break the silence with constant human noise is, I believe, precisely an avoidance of the sacred terror of that divine encounter.

I am one who eats breakfast gazing at morning glories.

Without bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the world?

The oak tree: not interested in cherry blossoms.

Year’s end, all corners of this floating world, swept.

The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.

At the ancient pond the frog plunges into the sound of water.

The moon and sun are travelers through eternity. Even the years wander on. Whether drifting through life on a boat or climbing toward old age leading a horse, each day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

I want to go, look for my essence, know myself and change myself; because nobody is constant.

Time is all we have and don’t.

My flowers rot beneath my bed. I was too selfish to part with them. I hope their deaths don’t bring hexes. Did I say flowers? I meant my exes.

He says your poems whisper too loudly of ugly truths. He forgets he authors the endings.

Sometimes it’s the ones that seem to love themselves the most, that actually love themselves the least.

She was afraid of heights but she was much more afraid of never flying.

Sometimes it’s as if we’re an overflowed tank. As if we are holding more than what can really fit inside us.

We lost sanity in vanity chaos breeds insanity.