“Respect your curses, for they are the instruments of your destiny.”

There are something like 18 billion cells in the brain alone. There are no two brains alike; there are no two hands alike; there are no two human beings alike. You can take your instructions and your guidance from others, but you must find your own path.

Love is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love. The stronger the love, the more the pain. Love itself is pain, you might say -the pain of being truly alive.

I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don’t let anyone throw you off.

Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold.

Gods suppressed become devils, and often it is these devils whom we first encounter when we turn inward.

The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond facts to something that informs the fact.

How do you find the divine power in yourself? The word enthusiasm means ‘filled with a god,’ so what makes you enthusiastic? Follow it. So I have a little word: follow your bliss. The bliss is the message of God to yourself. That’s where your life is.

The Fates guide those who will and drag those who won’t!

Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.

Let the world be as it is and learn to rock with the waves.

The purpose of the journey is compassion. When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion.

Vegetarians are people who cannot hear tomatos screaming.

Change the focus of the eye. When you have done that, then the end of the world as you formerly knew it will have occurred, and you will experience the radiance of the divine presence everywhere, here and now.

Suddenly you’re ripped into being alive. And life is pain, and life is suffering, and life is horror, but my god you’re alive and its spectacular.

You’ve got to say yes to this miracle of life as it is, not on condition that it follow your rules.

The problem of making the inner meet the outer of today is, of course, the function of the artist.

A soldier plods and groans, sweats and toils, he growls and curses, and at the end he dies.

And then away for home! Away to the quickest and nearest train! Away from this cursed land, where the devil and his children stil walk with earthly feet!

Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.

I’m a father; I’m a friend. I think I’ve got the biggest heart in the world. A lot of times, that’s not a good thing. It’s a gift and a curse.

Children curse their parents for their wrinkled skin and hoarse voices. Those now old children also want to stop time, but at another time. They want to freeze their own children at the center of time.

It was the year you learned that shooting stars were either a blessing or a curse, depending on what you wanted to believe.

Beer is a gift from the goddesses, a soothing balm given our species to bring joy and comfort in compensation for the curse of self-awareness.

I tend to curse in French more often than I do in English.