“Honesty is not found in revealing the truth, but in understanding how ...” — David Whyte Quote

“Honesty is not found in revealing the truth, but in understanding how deeply afraid of it we are. To become honest is in effect to become fully and robustly incarnated into powerlessness.”

“Stop trying to change reality by attempting to eliminate complexity.”

“We learn, grow and become compassionate and generous as much through exile as homecoming, as much through loss as gain, as much through giving things away as in receiving what we believe to be our due.”

“Poetry is often the art of overhearing yourself say things you didn't know you knew. It is a learned skill to force yourself to articulate your life, your present world or your possibilities for the future.”

“I believe that human beings are desperate, always, to belong to something larger than themselves.”

“In the poetic tradition, the heart's affections are indeed holy, and if organizations are asking for people's hearts and minds, they are asking in a way for their holy and hidden affections at the same time.”

“Neel cuts in: "Where'd you grow up?”

“We men really, really, really like sex. We like sex so much, many of us are willing to risk getting in serious trouble to get it. That's why laws against rape haven't stopped rape, and why laws against prostitution haven't stopped prostitution, and why men who cheat on their wives would continue to cheat even if it was illegal, and why gay men continue to be gay even in fundamentalist religious countries like Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is punishable by death.”

“A truth is what it is. A lie, a thought out deception more brutal than a truth could ever be.”

“You get what you give, but also what you're willing to take.”

“I think about this, not like someone thinking, but like someone breathing,”

“Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.”