Nobody Home Quotes

“There are two things that are really educational. One is being with a bunch of really smart people. The other is being all by yourself.”
― Gary Snyder, Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places

“What I like most about Buddhism really is its fearlessness. So much of what warps people is fear of death and fear of impermanence. So much of what we do is simply strategies to try and hold back death, trying to buy time with material things. So at its best Buddhism provides people with a way of seeing their own frailty: you need less in the way of material objects and fortresses around yourself.”
― Gary Snyder, Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places

“If you have an understanding and cannot express it, then your understanding is not yet complete.”
― Gary Snyder, Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places

“Don’t imagine that we’re doing ecological politics to save the world. We’re doing ecological politics to save ourselves, to save our souls. It’s a personal exercise in character and in manners. It’s a matter of etiquette. It’s a matter of living right. It’s not that the planet requires us to be good to it. It’s that we must do it because it’s an aesthetic and ethical choice.”
― Gary Snyder, Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places

“the mind poet stays in the house / the house is empty and it has no walls / the poem is seen from all sides / everywhere / at once.”
― Gary Snyder, Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places

“I don't think it would be apprpriate for a man to call himself a feminist.”
― Gary Snyder, Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places

“There is a character that you’re born with, and there are tendencies that are prior to what your parents have socialized you into. There are definitely tendencies among girls to do certain things in certain ways, and there are tendencies in boys to do certain things, prior to socialization. Then socialization can enforce certain things or play down certain things. But you’re not dealing with a totally blank slate.”
― Gary Snyder, Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places