We need a warrior’s heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities.

The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are the moments when we touch one another.

Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.

We do not have to improve ourselves; we just have to let go of what blocks our heart.

Do not doubt your own basic goodness. In spite of all confusion and fear, you are born with a heart that knows what is just, loving, and beautiful.

In the end, just three things matter: How well we have lived How well we have loved How well we have learned to let go

Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.

Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.

The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love.

We cannot be too careful about the words we use

At first an ordeal and then an accomplishment, the daily run becomes a staple, like bread, or wine, a fine marriage, or air. It is also a free pass to friendship.

I am not an icon of democracy. You are all, collectively, the icon of democracy.

I had an amazing childhood, lots of love. But my dad worked his tail off, getting up at 4 in the morning and going off at 5, 6 o'clock, yet he always had time to spend with his kids and his wife.

In America, we are putting our energy companies out of business. We have to bring back our workers.

The sand murmurs that it wants to swallow everything.

I have made sense of my life by developing an ability to analyze Mainstream American Cultural Artifacts.

History is an orphan. It can speak, but cannot hear. It can give, but cannot take. Its wounds and tragedies can be read and known, but cannot be avoided or cured.

At my age, you not only have bittersweet memories, you make bittersweet plans.

We're all flawed human beings and we all have a cauldron of psychosis which we have to unravel as we grow older and find the way we fit in to live our lives as best as possible.