"God made you a masterpiece — be blessed, secure, disciplined and equipped."

You must learn to get in touch with the innermost essence of your being. This true essence is beyond the ego. It is fearless; it is free; it is immune to criticism; it does not fear any challenge. It is beneath no one, superior to no one, and full of magic, mystery, and enchantment.

A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.

The secret of salvation is this: keep sweet, be useful, and keep busy.

I became a poet at the age of sixteen. I did not intend to do it. It was not my fault.

The ability to be good is not the ability to do nothing. It is not negative or passive. It is the ability to do something well--to do good work for good reasons. In order to be good you have to know how--and this knowing is vast, complex, humble and humbling; it is of the mind and of the hands, of neither alone.

And yet love obstinately answers that no loved one is standardized. A body, love insists, is neither a spirit nor a machine; it is not a picture, a diagram, a chart, a graph, an anatomy; it is not an explanation; it is not a law. It is precisely and uniquely what it is. It belongs to the world of love, which is a world of living creatures, natural orders and cycles, many small, fragile lights in the dark.

The significance - and ultimately the quality - of the work we do is determined by our understanding of the story in which we are taking part.

As Walter Shewring rightly said, both "the plowman and the potter have a cosmic function." And bad art in any trade dishonors and damages Creation.

And in the fields and the town, walking, standing, or sitting under the trees, resting and talking together in the peace of a sabbath profound and bright, are people of such beauty that he weeps to see them. He sees that these are the membership of one another and of the place and of the song or light in which they live and move.

I made it on the bevel.

Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.