“We don’t need any sort of religious orientation to lead a life that is ethical, compassionate & kind.”

Forgiveness can be bittersweet. It contains the sweetness of the release of a story that has caused us pain, but also the poignant reminder that even our dearest relationships change over the course of a lifetime.

Meditation can be a refuge, but it is not a practice in which real life is ever excluded. The strength of mindfulness is that it enables us to hold difficult thoughts and feelings in a different way—with awareness, balance, and love

When we bring deep awareness to whatever’s bothering us, the same things might be happening, but we are able to relate to them differently.

By practicing meditation we establish love, compassion, sympathetic joy & equanimity as our home.

Just as a prism refracts light differently when you change its angle, each experience of love illuminates love in new ways, drawing from an infinite palette of patterns and hues.

By engaging in a delusive quest for happiness, we bring only suffering upon ourselves. In our frantic search for something to quench our thirst, we overlook the water all around us and drive ourselves into exile from our own lives.

Letting go is an inside job, something only we can do for ourselves.

Restore your attention or bring it to a new level by dramatically slowing down whatever you’re doing.

Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively.

Once we are honest about our feelings, we can invite ourselves to consider alternative modes of viewing our pain and can see that releasing our grip on anger and resentment can actually be an act of self-compassion.

We have the power to improve our work lives immeasurably through awareness, compassion, patience & ingenuity.

Fearful of wasting a second, we hoard time as if it were money.

Like water poured from one vessel to another, metta flows freely, taking the shape of each situation without changing its essence.

We cannot simply forgive and forget, nor should we.

Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what’s happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self.

Pain & suffering requires time, awareness, and an intentional practice of self-love to disentangle.

My cinema – the ’50s, ’60s – is different from the cinema today so I thought that it would not be bad to show that kind of cinema where we could dream.

I remember the whole thing with the word ambition. I was messed up for a while because I associated it with certain people who just want to be famous. I think, for a while, it was kind of a dirty word for women.

The Wings of all kinds of Insects, are, for the most part, very beautiful Objects, and afford no less pleasing an Object to the mind to speculate upon, then to the eye to behold.”

The fact that everybody in the world dreams every night ties all mankind together.

There’s something inside of me that makes me want to help people, especially people who are having difficulty of some kind.

People were incredibly kind to our family and went out of their way to help.

Remember, I’m the kind of kid who used to get stuffed into a locker by school bullies. I’ve never felt like I’m a big star at any level of my life.

Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.