“Dying without actually fully living, without waking up to our lives while we have the chance, is an ongoing and significant risk.”

Healing is a coming to terms with things as they are, rather than struggling to force them to be as they once were, or as we would like them to be, to feel secure or to have what we sometimes think of as our own way.

Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.

When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting.

Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.

Mindfulness is not about getting anywhere else.

Mindful parenting is the hardest job on the planet, but it’s also one that has the potential for the deepest kinds of satisfactions over the life span, and the greatest feelings of interconnectedness and community and belonging.

Mindfulness is a way of paying attention, on purpose and non-judgmentally, to what goes on in the present moment in your body, mind and the world around you.

See for yourself whether letting go when a part of you really wants to hold on doesn’t bring a deeper satisfaction than clinging.

Paying attention and awareness are universal capacities of human beings.

Meditation is really a non-doing. It is the only human endeavor I know of being where you already are.

When you’re walking, just walk. When you’re eating, just eat. Not in front of the TV, not with the newspaper. It turns out, that’s huge.

The only time that any of us have to grow or change or feel or learn anything is in the present moment. But we’re continually missing our present moments, almost willfully, by not paying attention.

But you cannot have harmony without a commitment to ethical behavior. It’s the fence that keeps out the goats that will eat all the young shoots in your garden.

You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.

He who dies before he dies does not die when he dies.

We take care of the future best by taking care of the present now.

At some point you’re gonna have to take a chance on something.

Marriage is the only chance (and it is but a chance) offered to women for escape from this death and how eagerly and how ignorantly it is embraced.

What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.

Dust off your heart and let it love once more.

The chance of failure is almost always better than the guarantee of never knowing.

Is there a chance? A fragment of light at the end of the tunnel? A reason to fight? Is there a chance you may change your mind? Or are we ashes and wine?

The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.

If you’re waiting around for something to be handed to you or win the lottery, chances are nothing is ever going to go down, you know, so you got to make it happen on your own.