“All situations teach you, and often it’s the tough ones that teach you best.”

The best spiritual instruction is when you wake up in the morning and say, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen today.’ And then carry that kind of curiosity through your life.

Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. Even if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other side of the continent, we find the very same problem awaiting us when we arrive.

Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.

So war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.

Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.

Whatever happens in your life, joyful or painful, do not be swept away by reactivity. Be patient with yourself and don’t lose your sense of perspective.

All the wars, all the hatred, all the ignorance in the world come out of being so invested in our opinions.

We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.

The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.

Since death is certain and the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?

The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.

If you follow your heart, you’re going to find that it is often extremely inconvenient.

It isn’t what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it’s what we say to ourselves about what happens.

I’m at my best when I’m exhausted and under pressure.

Being perfect is being flawed, accepting it, and never letting it make you feel less than your best.

He who best knows the world will love it least.

I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh.

No one’s better than me. I’m not better than anyone. Whether it’s Eric Clapton or BB King we look straight at each other. And that keeps it real.

I have tons of regrets, but I think that’s one of the reasons that push people to create things. Out of their angst, their regret, comes the best from artists, painters and writers.

Parents try the best they can. They want the best for you. But a lot of their stuff is just their own. If you can pull yourself away from it and not always feel like they’re attacking you, then it’s easier to deal with.

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.