Silence was the first prayer I learned to trust.

I don't write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know.

People come and go in life, but they never leave your dreams. Once they're in your subconscious, they are immortal.

Prayer as focus is not a way of limiting what can be seen; it is a habit of attention brought to bear on all that is.

We only store in memory images of value. To write about one's life is to live it twice, and the second time is both spiritual and historical.

Maybe being oneself is always an acquired taste.

Memory is, first, a captivating mystery.

Fundamentally, [prayer] is a position, a placement of oneself.

No memoirists writes for long without experiencing an unsettling disbelief about the reliability of memory, a hunch that memory is not, after all, just memory.

True memoir is written, like all literature, in an attempt to find not only a self but a world

Writing is so hard. And then, sometimes, it is so bewilderingly easy.

The most painful moment in my life also became the moment I showed the most strength and courage.

To enter the Buddha Way is to stop discriminating between good and evil and to cast aside the mind that says this is good and that is bad.

I have no plans to retire. It's the perfect combination of work and play that keeps you young. If I quit work it would be the beginning of the end for me.

I love opera, I love writing for the voice, I love telling stories with music.

To disagree, one doesn't have to be disagreeable.

All men should be required to have their marital status tattooed on their foreheads.

We're not just a band playing songs, we're a safe place to go forget your troubles.

Basil Fawlty was an easy character for me. For some reason, portraying a mean, uptight, incompetent bully comes naturally to me.

He scowled at me."You aren't any fun." "Party pooper extraordinaire,that's me.

I know that DER SPIEGEL is a respected magazine. But I don't know whether it is possible for you to publish the truth about the Holocaust. Are you permitted to write everything about it?