“whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh & exciting - over & over announcing your place in the family of things.”

“You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers.Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –over and over announcing your placein the family of things.”

“eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in…And someone’s face, whom you love, will be as a starBoth intimate and ultimate, And you will be heart-shaken and respectful. And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisperOh let me, for a while longer, enter the twoBeautiful bodies of your lungs...Look, and look again.This world is not just a little thrill for your eyes.It’s more than bones.It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.It’s more than the beating of a single heart.It’s praising.It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.You have a life- just imagine that!You have this day, and maybe another, and maybeStill another…And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned, I have become younger.And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.”

“What will you do with your one precious, wild life?”

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

“And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. "Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”

“there was a new voicewhich you slowlyrecognized as your own,that kept you companyas you strode deeper and deeperinto the world,determined to dothe only thing you could do --determined to savethe only life you could save.”