“The heart in us is deeper than any emotion or psychological issue.”

When our desires are fulfilled, and we still feel unhappy – this is the moment we begin the process of letting go.

Until you are fully enlightened, you can never know what another person’s reality is like for them.

We instantly believe everything we think. Isn’t that insane? It’s good for us to explore the depravity of our minds, so we know we are just as crazy as everyone else!

The ultimate act of power is surrender.

I just try to keep my heart open. By this, I mean to try not to let my own programmed reaction to things keep me closed down for too long.

As we do practice something unexpected starts to happen-we get happy!

Real compassion is not emotional. Real compassion is based on the experience that all beings, which might appear separate, are actually a part of my own body, and I am a part of the body of the universe. We are not separate. So if one being hurts, I also hurt.

You can’t think yourself out of a box that’s made of your thoughts.

I mope around less. It is horrible. I miss it.

The presence of real love in the world inspires me.

You can’t manipulate a heart open. You can only allow it to open in the right circumstances.

I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew whatever it was that I was looking for was real.

Practice is not about how you feel while you are doing it. You are planting seeds.

You can never really know what a guru is as long as you are imprisoned by your own thoughts and circular ego.

Chanting just hits you and you want to be a part of it. That’s the point of this whole thing. That’s what cuts through all the ‘stuff’. You get lit up. You don’t have to know what it means.

All we can know is our own subjective version of reality. That’s the way we go through our lives. Everybody.

As a woman leader, I thought I brought a different kind of leadership. I was interested in women’s issues, in bringing down the population growth rate… as a woman, I entered politics with an additional dimension – that of a mother.

I’ve spent my life navigating through sensitive issues. Not wanting to upset people.

Tonight, you are hearing from the Democratic women of the Senate… We stand together on so many issues: economic prosperity, quality education for all, protecting a woman’s right to choose

Now, more than ever, we need to connect the dots between climate, poverty, energy, food and water. These issues cannot be addressed in isolation.

One thing that fiction does is it allows us to take big picture questions, big issues, big moral and socio-political changes and see how they play out on real people’s lives, with real individuals.

We don’t discuss this issue [conversations with Russia] as a government, but we discuss the repercussions, which is more important because sometimes repercussions could be more destroying than the strike itself.

We thought a magazine, even a self proclaimed literary review, had to be involved in politics. We felt sex was healthy and made (then) bold use of fiction and graphics so declaring. We operated on a shoestring and still got our issues out on time. In short, we had a ball.

The more important reason is that the research itself provides an important long-run perspective on the issues that we face on a day-to-day basis.