“How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?”

Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.

We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels.

Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don’t get on with machismo. I’m interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that’s what we are.

You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you’re annoyed with them.

What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.

An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths – by panicked shouting.

It’s hard loving those who don’t much like themselves: “If you’re so great, why would you think I’m so great.

The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.

Work is most fulfilling when you’re at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.

The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.

Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.

Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one’s own ambitions.

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.

to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap

Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.

The real resistance now is to an art which forces its audience to recognize and accept imaginatively.

Love. Only love can accept our differences as we journey through life. And only love can allow space for our growth.

Living every moment as if it was our first and last is a genuine life of gratitude, acceptance and wisdom.

Would Americans accept if we decided to come here and decide who your rulers should be? So why do you expect us Iranians to accept the idea that the United States shall come in there and decide who shall govern us?

As far as I know, if you take your time, write a good script and make a good film, then give the audience time, they will accept it.

When we accept life as it is, we can respond appropriately to the way we’re experiencing it, rather than just reacting out of fear and aversion.

It’s an effulgence of the mind. It’s a brightness that is truly sensitive and accepting. It’s an ability to accept life as it is.

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.