Like most people who live in India, I complain about corruption, but know that I can live with corrupt men. It is the honest ones I secretly worry about.

It's amazing. The moment you show cash, everyone knows your language.

A man's past keeps growing, even when his future has come to a full stop.

I was looking for the key for years But the door was always open

The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave

You can't expect a man in a dung heap to smell sweet.

Columbia University, where I went to study in 1993, insisted its undergraduates learn a foreign language, so I discovered French.

We are made mysteries to ourselves by the Rooster Coop we are locked in.

See, the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of?? Losing weight and looking like the poor.

You ask 'Are you a man or a demon?' Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.

Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.

One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. Another secret is that laughter is carbonated holiness

✵ When I first met you there was a garden growing from a black hole in my mind. ✵

Marriage is like the romantic ideal, and yet the trappings around it and the culture about it are really the opposite of that.

I am a strong believer that as one moves toward the future, the strongest and clearest way to do it is if you have a good sense of your past. You cannot have a very tall tree without deep roots.

Every member of my family was displaced by Katrina.

I often play on the cello-bass side of the orchestra, because I prefer the deep sounds. I can't hear the violins well.

Buddhism’s cardinal ethical principle is to avoid causing harm.

I think that all things are spirit and are derived from spirit. When you look at life from that perspective, it takes on a whole new meaning.

Dearer to me than the evening star A Packard car A Hershey bar Or a bride in her rich adorning Dearer than any of these by far Is to lie in bed in the morning

It's that idea that you can have one drink - and no you can't. Within a week I was drinking heavily. It was so quick that even I was like, 'Wow.'