To be 'free' only when things are pleasant is not real freedom.

Once you know your deepest wish you can base your life on intention rather than craving

You don't have to be equal, you don't have to be better, you don't have to be worse. You can just be at peace.

Mindfulness, by helping us notice our impulses before we act, gives us the opportunity to decide whether to act and how to act

If you want to attain peace, live peacefully

Who are you in the silence between your thoughts?

One of the things that kills Buddhist spiritual life is excessive seriousness.

People who do not see their choices do not believe they have choices.

It can be easy to love all beings from a distance; it can be a great challenge when we have to live with them.

Nothing whatsoever is worth the cost of a contracted heart.

Freedom from clinging gives room in our hearts to grow.

Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, and when it comes, hold your head high, look it quarely in the eye and say, 'I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.

Self-taught poverty is a help toward philosophy, for the things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

Sometimes living takes more courage than dying.

I don't have a girlfriend. No, I don't. I haven't had a relationship in years, actually. But yeah, I'm still looking. It's kind of nice to be looking for a home at the same time.

The short of it is, as an aspiring writer, there is nothing as damaging to your credibility as saying that you don't like to read.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing to do, but when you try to deal with prescient themes in the present, that is what you're doing.

I'll always be a foreigner.

You can't show love to someone at the expense of someone else who loves you.

Were't not for laughing, I should pity him.