“I want this poem to be nicer
than life. I want you to look at it
when anxiety zigzags your stomach
and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I'll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.”

~ Stephen Dunn

“When people go to the gym, for example, they know pretty much what’s going to happen, and how it’s going to happen. Lifting weights causes muscles to stretch and even tear a little, causing lactic acid to build up, causing the muscles to rebuild themselves bigger and with more capacity than they had before. It’s a physical process, and while trainers will debate the best methods until the end of time, the basic operation is clearly understood.

Meditation is similar. If you do the work, predictable changes in the mind and the brain tend to result, in a fairly reliable way. This, in a sense, is the very opposite of spirituality—and it’s certainly not religion either. It’s more like working out: Each time I come back to the breath, I’m strengthening very specific neural networks.”

~ Jay Michaelson

“Take a luxurious bite
out of the present,
and whistle along the road
of your destiny.”

~ Pablo Neruda

“Meditation, so I've heard, is best accomplished
if you entertain a certain strict posture.
Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree.
So why should I think I could ever be successful?”

~ Mary Oliver

“I don't wish to be seen as regretting the life I could have had if I'd not been mentally ill, nor am I asking anyone for their pity. What I rather wish to say is that the humanity we all share is more important than the mental illness we may not.”

~ Elyn Saks

"You see dear reader (speaking frankly, without any intention to offend), you are a ramshackle collection of coincidences held together by a desperate and irrational clinging..."

~ John Burdett

"Every living thing
has preferences."

~ Jim Dollar

"If I had to write a poem to end all poems,
it would be the word ‘lonely’
in every language."

~ Caitlyn Siehl

"Dive in with your eyes closed
For the life you were born to claim
And the water will be paralyzed
By the courage you contain
And the flutter of your earnest heart
It will fill the silent seas"

~ Ryan O'Neal 

I took this photo with a disposable camera – after accidentally frying the digital one I'd brought on the first day of the trip – and it's one of my all-time favorite shots. It's a reminder to me that holiness and human imperfection are inseparably tangled up together.

"Brains seek a balance between exploiting the knowledge we’ve earned and exploring new surprises. In developing over eons, brains have gotten this tension well balanced – an exploration/exploitation tradeoff that strikes the balance between flexibility and rigor. Too much predictability and we tune out; too much surprise and we become disoriented. We live in a constant tug-of-war between routine and novelty. Creativity lies within that tension."

~ David Eagleman

"It’s a very difficult principle to grasp, this idea that actually, what I don’t know matters enormously, and what I can’t see matters enormously."

~ Daniel Kahneman

"Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer."

~ Brad Aaron Modlin

"I will always hold you close,
But I will learn to let you go.
I promise I’ll do better."

Sleeping at Last

"We're all hallucinating all the time, including right now. It's just that when we agree about our hallucinations, we call that reality."

~ Anil Seth

"There’s a tendency for us to think that to be a prophet or to do anything grand, you have to have a special gift, be someone called for. And I think ultimately what really matters is the resolve — to want to do it, to give your life to that which you consider important."

~ Enrique Martínez Celaya

"What we’ve been doing for thousands of years is just trying to piece by piece get some understanding of where we came from, where the universe came from, and where it’s all going. So, to me, that is not distinct from what the poet does or what the philosopher does or what the great writer does or the composer does. They just do it in a different language."

~ Brian Greene

"i want to feel tectonic shifts.
i want to be. i want to be astonished."

~ Sleeping at Last

"What is home?"

~ Pádraig Ó Tuama

"I mean, it works. All you have to do is do it. You don’t even have to do it well – or right."

~ Mary Karr