“You think religions are constant things? inflexible and solid and form full-grown? Religions evolve. They grow out of a need, just like any other natural phenomenon, and they follow the same natural laws. They are born, grown, have sons, and illegitimate sons, and die.”

“But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grown pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.”

“We do not accept a religion because it offers us certain rewards. The only thing that a religion can offer us is to be just what it, in itself, is: a greater meaning in ourselves, in our lives, and in our grasp of the nature of things...a religion exists for us only if, like a piece of poetry, it carries us away. It is not in any sense a 'hypothesis.”

“The love of nature is religion, and that religion is poetry; these three things are one thing. This is the unspoken creed of haiku poets.”

“Subject to the law(s) of nature, hate is born to die”

“Bad luck doesn't have any chinks in it," he said with deep bitterness. "I was born a son of a bitch and I'm going to die a son of a bitch.”