In the Buddhist approach, life and death are seen as one whole, where death is the beginning of another chapter of life. Death is the mirror in which the entire meaning of life is reflected.

Light must come from inside. You cannot ask the darkness to leave; you must turn on the light.

We must never forget that it is through our actions, words, and thoughts that we have a choice.

The most essential thing in life is to establish an unafraid, heartfelt communication with others.

Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the real path to freedom.

Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues.

The key to finding a happy balance in modern lives is simplicity.

Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow.

Just as the ocean has waves or the sun has rays, so the minds's own radiance is its thoughts and emotions.

What we have to learn, in both meditation and in life, is to be free of attachment to the good experiences, and free of aversion to the negative ones.

It is compassion, then, that is the best protection; it is also, as the great masters of the past have always known, the source of all healing.

The Hollywood movies are more like novels, and the kinds of films I make are more like poems.

We realize--often quite suddenly--that our sense of self, which has been formed and constructed out of our ideas, beliefs and images, is not really who we are. It doesn't define us, it has no center.

Friends don't always make the best of business partners.

That's a horrible plan." "Yes, but I have chosen to ignore that.

Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.

To those to whom Christ is the hope of future glory, he is also the life of present grace.

When I die I just want to be remembered as a Christian.

A guilty conscience never feels secure.

The Word of God is like a lamp to guide us.

Real life has always let me down. That's why I do the monologues. I have always said I would rather tell a life than live a life. But I have to live a life in order to tell one.