“No matter how hard they try, they'll never create anything so perfectly beautiful as what plays out in my own imagination.”

“All men are created equal. Now matter how hard they try, they can never erase those words. That is what America is about.”

“No matter how hard you try to create a story that's completely fictional, parts of your own experience are bound to surface.”

“The point is that something I thought was perfect has been broken, and I'm having to find the beauty in what is there instead of what I thought was there. Like this shell. I can either spend all my time wishing it were perfect, trying to imagine it the way it was or might have been, or I can see how beautiful it is just like this. ”

“I never assume anything. I anticipate the possibilities and allow my imagination to create the future.”

“What is Zen? Zen means doing anything perfectly, making mistakes perfectly, being defeated perfectly, hesitating perfectly, doing anything perfectly or imperfectly, perfectly. What is the meaning of this perfectly? How does it differ from perfectly? Perfectly is in the will; perfectly is in the activity. Perfectly means that at each moment of the activity there is no egoism in it… our pain is not only our own pain; it is the pain of the universe. The joy of the universe is also our joy. Our failure and misjudgment is that of nature, which never hopes or despairs, but keeps on trying. R. H. Blyth”