I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends' floors, was happy, was miserable.

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.

We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.

When you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you're suffering in.

We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.

Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.

There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.

Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.

The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.

What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.

Saying that someone is full of themselves is silly. Who else can one be full of … except self?

Until we care more about what God thinks than what other people think we are never truly free

The difficulty that negotiators have is often based on the cultural difference that various countries have.

When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally.

Nature makes all the noblemen; wealth, education, or pedigree never made one yet.

Your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.

Women have always been at the forefront of progressive movements. Women can be depended on when you need bodies in the streets for women's rights and human rights.

I'm amazed that things have panned out the way they have. I always say I'm so lucky, though my mum always says, 'You make your own luck.'

I was a really good student. I was nerdy and ambitious. I was involved with every large theater production at my school.

When you first come into Parliament, it's a daunting place because you feel you've so much to learn. Once you've been re-elected, you feel much more confident. It just gives you a bit of a boost.