Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.

Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.

As life becomes harder and more threatening, it also becomes richer, because the fewer expectations we have, the more good things of life become unexpected gifts that we accept with gratitude.

We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.

Such words as 'God' and 'Death' and 'Suffering' and 'Eternity' are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be.

Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that's not too awful either, but never, never give up.

Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.

That I should die next week, I would still be able to sit at my desk all week and study with perfect equanimity, for I know now that life and death make a meaningful whole.

I don’t want to be anything special. I only want to try to be true to that in me which seeks to fulfill its promise.

There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in, but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze.

How rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses.

If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.

All I am saying is that you should begin to see greatness as something you cannot do without. Begin to see greatness as something that you cannot afford not to have.

I just think you can't shut your life off to just, you know, one thing. You gotta be open-minded. Explore things. Feed your artist.

Bikram Yoga will give you 'The Key to the Kingdom of Health'

I love raising animals. I look at animals as more perfect human beings. I can relate to an animal.

it's gonna hurt because it matters.

There is no art without intention.

A screenwriter is much like being a fire hydrant with a bunch of dogs lined up around it.

I know that some people work differently, but I have to work from the inside out. It doesn't matter how big the character is, there has to be a truthful core.

I've written 16 children's books and five unpublished novels. Some of the latter were breathtakingly bad.