Quotes About Meditation

I ran over 10 years without missing a day, averaging close to 15 miles. I loved being able to run a long distance and get that feeling of strength and exhilaration from being in good shape. There was a meditative quality about it. Almost effortlessness. That's a special feeling.

I think at this point I only write books about questions I really want to figure out. They're indulgences, essentially. I think, 'What would I like to spend five years really thinking about? What could I gain from thinking about for five years?'

I'm happier in a garden.

I have a little garden, and I quite enjoy fiddling about in it.

I'm a flower gardener.

I do the gardening.

I find I am growing fonder of gardening, listening to music and reading.

Getting up early is one of the gifts I give myself.

I like to be on my own before I do a gig.

It is at the time of dawn that we must commune with the gods.

After getting a gold medal I could celebrate but also was trying to keep the emotions at bay.

Sometimes when you're an artist, you need to be in your own head; you need to stay in it to be able to get to a good place.

So we sit there together the mountain and me, Li Po said, until only the mountain remains.

Auto-Lullaby Think of a sheep knitting a sweater; think of your life getting better and better. Think of your cat asleep in a tree; think of that spot where you once skinned your knee. Think of a bird that stands in your palm. Try to remember the Twenty-first Psalm. Think of a big pink horse galloping south; think of a fly, and close your mouth. If you feel thirsty, then drink from your cup. The birds will keep singing until they wake up.

Writing does a lot of other things, of course. People write books to instruct. They write books to move us, to scare us, to enlighten us in all sorts of ways. But basically what these works of literature or of art are doing is to say, Stop thinking. Stop expecting. Stop living in the past. Stop living in the future. Stop doing anything and just pay attention to this.

preachers and theologians, who spend so much of their lives talking about God that, unless they are very careful, God starts to lose all reality for them and to become just a subject for metaphysical speculation.

I let myself flop - so gently, so slowly - into my one real chair and tried to make myself understand that I was on the doorstep of the universe.

To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against them.

Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts.

Never trust a thought that occurs to you indoors.

O Solitude! You are my home, Solitude!

Solitude has seven skins; nothing gets through any more.

We think too fast, even while walking or on the way, or while engaged in other things, no matter how serious the subject.

Like a deep well is the solitary. Easy it is to throw a stone in; but if it sink to the bottom, tell me, who will want to fetch it out again?