“Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don’t have to like it. It’s just easier if you do.”

Until you can love what is – everything, including the apparent violence and craziness – you’re separate from the world, and you’ll see it as dangerous and frightening.

When we question our thoughts, we see that the craziness was never in the world, but in us.

It’s not easy to find your own way when you believe that you need love, approval, appreciation, or anything from your family. It’s particularly hard when you want them to see things your way.

It’s not possible to have a problem without believing a prior thought. To notice this simple truth is the beginning of peace.

Nothing comes ahead of its time, and nothing ever happened that didn’t need to happen.

Until the mind is open, the heart stays closed. The open mind is the key to the open heart.

When you discover that all happiness is inside you, the wanting and needing are over, and life gets very exciting.

When safety is our priority, we live our lives being very, very careful, and we wind up having no lives.

To argue with reality is to argue with God.

Every mind deserves to be free. When the mind is free, that’s the end of suffering.

For me, everything is God. Everything and everyone. So it was just, God needs me now, now, now.

Until we know that death is equal to life, we live in fear.

Since the past is unreal and the future is unreal, all your thoughts are about nothing.

I see the goodness and beauty in everyone, and everything is a gift given for me and for all of us. If you don’t love it, question your mind until you do.

To understand our own thinking is to understand all thinking.

Nothing terrible has ever happened except in our thinking. Reality is always good, even in situations that seem like nightmares. The story we tell is the only nightmare that we have lived.

I wanted to be great. And I loved Nashville, so that made it easy. I loved the music business. It made it easy for me to stay and make a life here.

If happiness were easy, everybody would feel it all the time, and it wouldn’t seem like such an elusive prize.

I hope he’ll go nice and easy – caught in the covers or bowled middle stump. I just hope he doesn’t get his pads in the way or his bat’s wide enough to get a thin edge [on Steve Waugh’s last innings]

The degree of notoriety I have is fine and easy. There’s nothing hysterical about it.

We break the rules, but it’s mostly because we don’t know what the rules are. It’s easy for us to go to certain places, so I’m not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.

However, nothing improves by accident, it requires conscious attention. When you are being bombarded by negatives, improvement, growth and success are easy to forget.

When I wrote I took on the role of the despondent and difficult to understand person. Whereas in life, I was easy to understand, to the point of being simple-minded maybe.

Letters should be easy and natural.