“Meditation is like a single log of wood. Insight and investigation are one end of the log; calm and concentration are the other end. If you lift up the whole log, both sides come up at once. Which is concentration and which is insight? Just this mind.”

Do everything with a mind that lets go. Do not expect praise or reward.

The mind is intrinsically tranquil. Out of this tranquility, anxiety and confusion are born. If one sees and knows this confusion, then the mind is tranquil once more.

Know and watch your heart. It’s pure but emotions come to colour it.

Don’t be attached to visions or lights in meditation, don’t rise or fall with them.

Well, if it really was her anger, then she should be able to tell it to go away, shouldnt she? But it really isn’t hers to command.

You will have a steady awareness within yourself.

Where does peace arise? Peace arises whenever we let something go.

A madman and an arahant both smile, but the arahant knows why while the madman doesn’t.

We can always find time to breathe. In the same way, if we see the importance of meditation practice we will find the time to practice.

Truth is all there is. It’s like when you learned how to read, you can then read anywhere you go.

The Dhamma has to be found by looking into your own heart and seeing that which is true and that which is not, that which is balanced and that which is not balanced.

We do it, not with desire, but with letting go. If you want anything, you wont find it.

Do not be in a hurry or try to push your practice. If you become peaceful, then accept it,; if you don’t become peaceful, then accept that also.

Better to begin practice without delay. I am like a good friend inviting you to go somewhere. Do not hesitate, just get going. You won’t regret it.

Once you understand non-self, then the burden of life is gone. You’ll be at peace with the world. When we see beyond self, we no longer cling to happiness and we can truly be happy.

When you sit, let it be. What you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing.

I watch everybody every night, from sitting down to being on their feet at the end, and I feel a sense of reinvention, of caring, presenting these songs in their purest form.

I think you fall out of love with theater while you’re doing your eighth show of your eighteenth week and your body is saying, “Please make this end.”

When you wrestle with a pig, he has fun, and you just end up dirty.

Count Basie practically adopted me at 13. We became closer and closer and I ended up conducting for him and Sinatra.

God’s words trump all opinions, including mine, and in the end, I believe God’s words lead to life.

I’m holding on so tightly to the promise that if nothing lasts forever, someday, this sadness will end too.

Every day we keep telling the same stories. Over and over. We forget that our endings can be different. So can the plot. I think it’s time for some surprise endings.

So what if you end up buying a size 6 instead of a 4? You can always cut out the label at home, and you’ll pretty soon forget whatever that number was because you’ll be too busy admiring how fantastic you look.