An old Zen rule of thumb is not to answer until one has been asked three times.

We have to face the pain we have been running from. In fact, we need to learn to rest in it and let its searing power transform us.

Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.

Meditation practice is simply moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others.

But opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future—ninety percent of the thoughts spinning around in our heads have no essential reality.

With unfailing kindness, your life always presents what you need to learn. Whether you stay home or work in an office or whatever, the next teacher is going to pop right up.

All I can be is who I am right now; I can experience that and work with it. That's all I can do. The rest is the dream of the ego.

It's of no use to look back and say, "I should have been different." At any given moment, we are the way we are, and we see what we're able to see. For that reason, guilt is always inappropriate.

Joy is being willing for things to be as they are.

There is one thing in life that you can always rely on: life being as it is.

Practice has to be a process of endless disappointment. We have to see that everything we demand (and even get) eventually disappoints us. This discovery is our teacher.

Sculpture occupies real space like we do... you walk around it and relate to it almost as another person or another object.

Too many people don't protect their smartphones with a password or PIN. I anticipate that Apple's fingerprint reader will in fact make iPhone 5S owners more likely to secure their smartphones.

I would love to do Broadway again.

So, the advice that I would always give is make sure you've got your own career, before you put your child in the business.

I want to do a record with Monica Lewinsky.

I'm really into nutrition from the inside out.

The writing part of my life never changes, because that's just when the inspiration comes.

I used to have to save my allowances to buy a quart of rubber to make a mask, and it's how I spent all my free time.

The cultural contrast I saw between religions... Catholics have a lot of mediators, going through saints and Mary or whatever. Protestants in general say things to God directly.

One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so; for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed.