“The deepest hunger of [a child’s] human heart is to be understood, for understanding implicitly affirms, validates, recognizes and appreciates the intrinsic worth of another.”

The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

It’s better to be trusted than to be liked.

Prepare your mind and heart before you prepare your speech. What we say may be less important than how we say it.

If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.

To achieve goals you’ve never achieved before, you need to start doing things you’ve never done before.

Anyone can count the seeds of an apple. Who can count the apples in a seed?

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are – or, as we are conditioned to see it.

You can buy a person’s hands but you can’t buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is.

It doesn’t really matter how fast you’re going if you’re heading in the wrong direction.

The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites and passions.

I teach people how to treat me by what I will allow.

Improve relationships with others by assuming that they can hear everything you say about them.

You have to water the flowers you want to grow.

We immediately become more effective when we decide to change ourselves rather than asking things to change for us.

Always surround yourself with people who are even more talented and competent than you.

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it’s like giving them emotional oxygen.

When becoming a character, you have to steal. Steal whatever you see. You can even steal from other actors’ characterizations; but if you do, only steal from the best.

If you lose your wealth, you have lost nothing; if you lose your health, you have lost something; but if you lose your character, you have lost everything.

I wasn’t stealing cars at like, six. But I’ve always been bad.

We were a very crunchy, sort of hippie-dippy family.

I’m feminine, but I wouldn’t say that I’m girly in any way at all.

Scent has become a way for me to differentiate characters.

The true Mason takes full responsibility for the condition of his character and ever strives for its perfection.

We are only what we are in the dark; all the rest is reputation.