Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
I consider writing a legitimate Zen practice.
I often wonder if all the writers who are alcoholics drink a lot because they aren't writing. It is not because they are writers that they are drinking, but because they are writers who are not writing.
My goal is to write every day. I say it is my ideal. I am careful not to pass judgment or create anxiety if I do not do it. No one lives up to his ideal.
Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.
Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak.
We have to accept ourselves in order to write. Now none of us does that fully: few of us do it even halfway. Don’t wait for one hundred percent acceptance of yourself before you write, or even eight percent acceptance. Just write. The process of writing is an activity that teaches us about acceptance.
If you are using an adverb, you have got the verb wrong.
No idea can succeed except at the expense of sacrifice; no one ever escapes without enduring strain from the struggle of life.
The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear Brothers [and Sisters], we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.
California is, in many respects, best understood as a nation-state. In the environmental-energy realm, California possesses far-reaching legal authorities that other states do not.