“I don’t always feel what I know I should feel.My thought crosses the river I swim very slowlyBecause the suit men made it wear weighs it down.”

“There are no roses in my yard: what wind brought you?But I suddenly come from far away. I was sick for a moment.No wind whatsoever brought you now.Now you’re here.What you were isn’t you, or else the whole rose would be here.”

“Also at times, on the surface of streams,Water?bubbles formAnd grow and burstAnd have no meaning at allExcept that they’re water?bubblesGrowing and bursting.”

“All beings exist and nothing elseAnd that’s why they’re called beings”

“Those of us who embrace the feminine know its strength.”

“Live, you say, in the present;Live only in the present.But I don’t want the present, I want reality;I want things that exist, not time that measures them.What is the present?It’s something relative to the past and the future.It’s a thing that exists in virtue of other things existing.I only want reality, things without the present.I don’t want to include time in my scheme.I don’t want to think about things as present; I want to think of them as things.I don’t want to separate them from themselves, treating them as present.I shouldn’t even treat them as real.I should treat them as nothing.I should see them, only see them;See them till I can’t think about them.See them without time, without space,To see, dispensing with everything but what you see.And this is the science of seeing, which isn’t a science.”

“If I could take a bite of the whole worldAnd feel it on my palateI’d be more happy for a minute or so…But I don’t always want to be happy.Sometimes you have to beUnhappy to be natural…Not every day is sunny.When there’s been no rain for a while, you pray for it to come.So I take unhappiness with happinessNaturally, like someone who doesn’t find it strangeThat there are mountains and plainsAnd that there are cliffs and grass…What you need is to be natural and calmIn happiness and in unhappiness,To feel like someone seeing,To think like someone walking,And when it’s time to die, remember the day dies,And the sunset is beautiful, and the endless night is beautiful…That’s how it is and that’s how it should be…”

“The man stopped talking and was looking at the sunset.But what does someone who hates and loves want with a sunset?”

“…I don’t believe in Him, and if He does exist, I don’t like Him. His type of gods aren’t gods who echo how mortals behave. They’re gods who are held up as example of perfection to be emulated. They’re not gods of the people. They’re remote and inaccessible, they demand blind, unthinking obedience from their followers. They’re dictators. We Aesir and Vanir, by contrast, are mirrors. Other gods rule. We reflect and magnify. We are you, only more so. We share your flaws and foibles. We are as humanlike as we are divine, and I think we are all the better for that.”

“And since today’s all there is for now, that’s everything.Who knows if I’ll be dead the day after tomorrow?If I’m dead the day after tomorrow, the thunderstorm day after tomorrowWill be another thunderstorm than if I hadn’t died.Of course I know thunderstorms don’t fall because I see them,But if I weren’t in the world,The world would be different —There would be me the less —And the thunderstorm would fall on a different world and would be another thunderstorm.No matter what happens, what’s falling is what’ll be falling when it falls.(7/10/1930)”

“Even so, I’m somebody.I’m the Discoverer of Nature.I’m the Argonaut of true sensations.I bring a new Universe to the UniverseBecause I bring the Universe to itself.”

“Accept the universeAs the gods gave it to you.If the gods wanted to give you something elseThey’d have done it.If there are other matters and other worldsThere are.”

“If I knew I was going to die tomorrow,And Spring came the day after tomorrow,I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow.If that’s its time, when else should it come?I like it that everything is real and everything is right;And I like that it would be like this even if I didn’t like it.And so, if I die now, I die peacefullyBecause everything is real and everything is right.”

“What comes, when it comes, will be what it is.”