Compassion is the ability to see what needs doing right now and the willingness to do it right now.

Disappointment is just the action of your brain readjusting itself to reality after discovering things are not the way you thought they were.

How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? The plum tree in the garden!

You can always improve your situation. But you do so by facing it, not by running away.

You can't function in society if you don't involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you're playing a game.

The truth comes when you can see that your self-image is just a convenient reference point and nothing more, and that you as you had imagined yourself do not exist.

Do what you do as well as you possibly can. That's Buddhist morality.

Truly compassionate action arises spontaneously without thought and is carried out in real action with no anticipation of reward and, indeed, no concept of a doer of that action.

Your role is to do and say the things that need to be done and said from your unique perspective.

Reality's all you've got. But here's the real secret, the real miracle: it's enough.

You won’t understand life and death until you’re ready to set aside any hope of understanding life and death and just live your life until you die.

speak from heart to get heard by heart.

Life is head and shoulders above all other things we regard as precious in this world.

There will always be people afraid of the monsters in the night. They are usually the ones that look for them because they have proven they exist in themselves.

I have a new television show in the works, and that is all I can say right now.

When I'm working on a novel of my own, I try to read mostly nonfiction, although sometimes I break down and peek at something else.

When life gives you lemons, make sure you know whose eyes you need to squeeze them in.

If people are going to be cooking the books, you're in trouble.

There's something to be said for embracing who you are.

I'm a modern girl, but you should put your husband first. I like to think divorce is not an option.

The instability of our tastes is the occasion of the irregularity of our lives.