“Kindness connects our souls and makes us richer for the experience.”

“I am, when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group: the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit.”

“Confidence comes from thoughtful action, reflection, and experience. Confidence does not come from reaction.”

“Reading the recipe of your grandma’s chicken soup will never compare to the taste. Seeing a magnificent sunset will never compare to somebody else’s description of that same sunset. Feeling the electrifying sensation of a passionate kiss will never compare to a second-hand account. Nothing replaces experience. If experience is at the heart of every religion, then theology points the way, practice gives us the vehicle, but we must take the steps if we want to personally explore our faith and reap experiences rather than rely solely on second-hand accounts.”

“Never trust a man who teaches about death but yet had no real experience at all about it.”

“One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer’s physical experience comes into us when we read her poem.”

“I tended to find lines of poetry beautiful only when I encountered them quoted in prose, in the essays my professors had assigned in college, where the line breaks were replaced with slashes, so that what was communicated was less a particular poem than the echo of poetic possibility. Insofar as I was interested in the arts, I was interested in the disconnect between my experience of actual artworks and the claims made on their behalf; the closest I’d come to having a profound experience of art was probably the experience of this distance, a profound experience of the absence of profundity.”

“Experience everything;Times of sorrow, times of Joy.Times of darkness, times of light.Times of lost heart, times of hope.Times of hate, times of love.Times of pain , times of peace.Times of distress, times of dancing.Times of sickness, times of recover of strength.Times of lost, times of finding the way.Times of wandering, times of wonder.Times of failure, times of success.Times of fall, times of rise.Time of sowing, times of harvesting.Times of injury , times of healing.Times of waiting, times of fulfilled wish.Times of praying, times of receiving the promise.Times of ploughing, times of planting.Times of dreaming, times of working to achieve the dream.Times of doubt, times of Faith.”

“Eventually, it boils down to two choices – do I wish to experience this physical reality primarily through joy or do I want to experience it through suffering? That’s all there is to it. And since each person eventually works their way toward the realization that conscious expansion can happen through joy rather than suffering – enlightenment is a natural byproduct.”

“I figure we go through things that make us stronger, but we also go through things that just simply piss us off.”

“Experience is the benefit of the past.Opportunity is the benefit of the present.Hope is the benefit of the future.Live your best life right now, at this exact moment. You can’t fix the future harboring on yesterday’s mistakes.”

“In the boundaryless forests, there’re dancers of nude.Yet in the confines of pasture, there’s promise of food.On which is your side?Ô, but tarry and bide,ere you decide,in both do confide.”