It's much better to become a Buddha than a Buddhist.

The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are the moments when we touch one another.

Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.

We do not have to improve ourselves; we just have to let go of what blocks our heart.

Do not doubt your own basic goodness. In spite of all confusion and fear, you are born with a heart that knows what is just, loving, and beautiful.

In the end, just three things matter: How well we have lived How well we have loved How well we have learned to let go

Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.

Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.

The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love.

You told me how much you hate me when yesterday you told me how much you love me, what happen?

If someone wanted to be a runner, you don't tell them to think about running, you tell them to run. And the same simple idea applies to writing, I hope.

You turn me on.” He cups my face, brushing my hair away from my eyes and a tear off my cheek.”“God, you turn me on. You're driving me crazy. I want you to need my hands on you. Do you?

Never settle for anything less than your best.

The first song I wrote was called "You" and it was a love song about somebody who didn't even exist. I remember them all because I used to always write terrible poetry. I keep all my notebooks.

I asked many friends if Australian anti-intellectualism was still a living force and they all told me it was. If you are above average intelligence, hide this embarrassing fact.

I don't even think of chimps as animals. I think of them as beings.

We gain nothing by trading the tyranny of capital for the tyranny of labor.

I had insecurities and fears like everybody does, and I got over it. But I was interested in the parts of me that struggled with those things.

How some dare scorn (as if a fabulous lie) that they should rise whom death to dust doth bind -- and like to beasts, a beastly life they lead, who naught attend save death when they are dead.