* Legendary [[NBA]] coach [[Phil Jackson]] cites ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'' as one of the major guiding forces in his life. His fond admiration for the book is the source of his nickname "The Zen Master."
* In Section 11 of the "[[Guidebook to Zen &and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance|Guidebook to Zen and& the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance]]" by Di Santo & Steele, it is correctly noted that the famous paraphrase “You never gain something but that you lose something” found in Chapter 29 of "Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" is ''not'' derived from [[Thoreau]] (as attributed by Pirsig and most others) but is actually derived from [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] and his phrase “For anything you gain, you lose something”. The phrase can be found in his 1841 [[essay]] “Compensation”.