Quotes from Mark Nepo

Stop talking, stop thinking, and there is nothing you will not understand. —SENG-TS'AN

Not surprisingly, like most people, in the first half of my life, I worked very hard to understand and strengthen my uniqueness.

Misery If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective.

Practicing As a man in his last breath drops all he is carrying each breath is a little death that can set us free. Breathing is the fundamental unit of risk, the atom of inner courage that leads us into authentic living. With each breath, we practice opening, taking in, and releasing. Literally, the teacher is under our nose. When anxious, we simply have to remember to breathe. So often we make a commitment to change our ways, but stall in the face of

I listened carefully as he described his little girl's first steps. He encouraged her to keep her eyes on him, and only when she didn't, did she stumble. Only when she lost her focus, when she became too conscious of the steps she was taking, did she fall.

It makes me wonder now, in middle age, if being spontaneous and kind and curious are all parts of our natural ability to swim.

how to feel the pain of living without denying it and without letting that pain define us. Ultimately, no matter the burden we are given—apartheid, cancer, abuse, depression, addiction—once whittled to the bone, we are faced with a never-ending choice: to become the wound or to heal.

The Art of Facing Things What people have forgotten is what every salmon knows. —ROBERT CLARK

In this way, I've learned that loving yourself requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world—our own self-worth.

Having an honest friend—one before whom you can dump all your heart's pockets and still feel that you are worth something—is a form of wealth that will buy you nothing but will give you everything. And mysteriously and rightly, to find such a friend, we must be such a friend.

And further, the thing put to rest—whether it be a loved one, a dream, or a false way of seeing—becomes the fertilizer for the life about to form. As the well-used thing joins with the earth, the old love fertilizes the new; the broken dream fertilizes the dream yet conceived; the painful way of being that strapped us to the world fertilizes the freer inner stance about to unfold.

that the best chance to be whole is to love whatever gets in the way, until it ceases to be an obstacle.

Live slow enough and there is only the beginning of time.

Once waking into the realization that eternity is waiting in every moment, I discovered that wealth is time, not money.

A love astounds us or a pain consumes us and we forget that we glow on our own.

We travel so far only to land where we are. We imagine other lives, only to meet who we are. We seek out love in special ways, only to find everyone is special. Humbly, we can't avoid this journey.

No bird can fly without opening its wings, and no one can love without exposing their hearts.

We are love. But in an everyday setting we have to make choices. We have limits. We can love everyone and we can't love everyone.

Try as we do to resist what we're given, this is the only doorway to truth. We waste too much time and energy denying or fighting where we find ourselves.

Truth is a seed hidden in the days until watered by what life brings us.

Whatever truth we feel compelled to withhold, no matter how unthinkable it is to imagine ourselves telling it, not to is a way of spiritually holding our breath. You can only do it for so long.

In truth, the more we lean into life, the more we authentically interact with the world, the brighter our flame.

Love and grief enable us to feel how we're all at heart the same. In love and grief, which is always very personal, the distinctions that separate us melt away.

My friends are the beings through whom God loves me.