“If you ask a tree how he feels to know that he's spreading his fragrance and making people happy, I don't think a tree looks at it that way. I am just like that, and it is just my nature to be like this.”

“I am not talking about you being a spectator, I am talking about involvement. I am talking about involving yourself into life in such a way that you dissolve into it.”

“People have fallen in love with words and lost the world. It’s time to regain it.”

“Too many people are hungry not because there is dearth of food. It is because there is dearth of love and care in human hearts.”

“There is so much adventure that only a youth can experience. Youth is not the time to languish in pleasure - youth is the time for exploration and adventure”

“A tree never feels how much fragrance it spreads. It's just its nature to be like that.”

“See that tree?" It was a stubby cypress tree, all bent and twisted."Yeah, I see it.""It's my favorite tree.""It's not that great a tree," I said."That's it. That's exactly it. It's like me. The wind beat the holy crap out of it when it was just a sapling. Never could straighten itself out again." He sort of smiled at me. "But, Zach, it didn't die." He looked like maybe he wanted to cry. But he didn't. "It's alive.""Maybe it should have just given up.""That tree didn't know how to do that. It only knew how to live. Crooked. Bent. Taller trees dwarfing it even more. It just wanted to live. I named it, you know?"He was waiting for me to ask what he'd named it--but I decided I didn't want to ask."Zach," he whispered. "The tree's name is Zach."[p. 135]”