Life is painful, suffering is optional.

Mindfulness meditation doesn't change life. Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart's capacity to accept life as it is.

Surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control.

The mind is like tofu. It tastes like whatever you marinate it in.

Spirituality doesn't look like sitting down and meditating. Spirituality looks like folding the towels in a sweet way and talking kindly to the people in the family eve though you've had a rough day.

May I meet each moment fully and meet it as a friend.

Ultimately ... it's not the stories that determine our choices, but the stories that we continue to choose.

If we can keep at least a bit of the mind clear about temporality, we can mange complicated, even difficult, times with grace.

Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of present experience. It isn't more complicated than that.

People are realizing that what seemed important to them in their lives-materialism and consumerism-doesn't work at all to make a happy heart. It actually makes an unhappy heart. And an unhappy world.

When the mind is clear, behavior is always impeccable.

...Every life contains a novel.

He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed.

You never fully appreciate what you had until you don’t have it anymore

How could he encapsulate in a pithy admissions-interview line all of his unique ideas and interests?

When a writer admits that he has an affection for something which he has written, it is high time to pray for his soul.

Men may not believe you, my son. But you must always say the truth, when the truth holds no danger for you or your loved ones.

I read Eve Ensler and thought it was fabulous. Not only that, but it was really the only thing I could relate to about cancer.

More than anyone, I am aware of the preconceptions. I was a Spice Girl. I'm married to a footballer.

There's that old saying: Squeeze the juice out of life before life squeezes the juice out of you. I will try to squeeze the remaining juice out of life.