I knew of no instruction manual for reaching a higher level of humanity and a greater wisdom. But I felt intuitively that laughter was the beginning of wisdom, as is was indispensable for survival.

I was discovering that the most precious gift someone can give us is time, because what gives time its value is death.

If you believe what you say, words become reality.

I was beginning to think that in life there might be some suffering that was worth enduring.

I already knew that I had the ability to free myself from hatred, and I viewed this as my most significant conquest.

Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at the stars because we are human?

Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow.

I had no more alphabetthan the journeying of the swallows, the pure and tiny waterof the small, fiery birdthat dances rising from the pollen.

Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords.

The things that inspire people to think are what keeps a film alive.

The only thing I really wanted to be was a beatnik, and look what happened: I ended up being in a band.

Permitted to inhabit neither the realm of the ideal nor the realm of the real, to be neither aspiration nor companion, beauty comes to us like a fugitive bird unable to fly, unable to land.

It is easier to rule others than to keep from being ruled oneself.

All of which raises another question: If Obamacare is so great, why do so many people want to get out from under it?

Happiness was not made to be boasted, but enjoyed. Therefore tho others count me miserable, I will not believe them if I know and feel myself to be happy; nor fear them.