I read a lot when I was in school in the United States, and even though writing in English is very difficult for me, I wrote in journals.

It's really hard when you read literature in a language that's not your own. There are all these cultural references you have to be born into that particular language to get.

For me, the more I understand the story of others, the greater I am able to learn and help other people.

Sometimes the mere connection we make with each other can change people's lives. It doesn't have to be something big. The mere fact that you're interested in them makes them happy.

I think every person has a unique story to tell and we each have the different life events that happen to us and sometimes we may feel sympathetic toward a certain aspect of that life event.

It's hard to choose the right word, the right line. This Body Mystery is a small book, but it took me over ten years.

I tried to write poems in rhyme. I tried writing songs. Sometimes I jotted down a thought. I would keep a log of spontaneous thoughts.

Art is really about how you capture different things you see around you and bring them into forms and words and shapes and meaning.

You have to experiment with different mediums and things around you [making art].

This is my first collaboration [with Mary Hamill] so I'm going to learn how it's going to work.

I started to paint in the year 2000. I never thought of going to an art school, even though I loved art.

For the advice in a joke is sometimes more useful than the most serious teaching.

In a universe that defies description, all systems of belief can only be false.

I'm a surfer at heart. Both my parents moved to Hawaii in the 1970s, where they met and became Christians. Then they taught me and my two brothers how to love the Lord - and how to surf!

Daylight reveals color; artificial light drains it.

If you aren't happy with your life, change things until you are... if you can't change something, change your attitude about it.

It would be a great thing if people could be brought to realize that they can never add to the sum of their happiness by doing wrong.

Kabul was very popular with the hippies in the Sixties and Seventies. It was very quiet and peaceful.

I much prefer whining to counting my blessings.

I had the pleasure of meeting that young man at the Patriarch's Ponds. He almost drove me mad myself, proving to me that I don't exist. But you do believe that it is really I?

Enlightenment is not about becoming divine. Instead it's about becoming more fully human. . . . It is the end of ignorance.