Since I was a small child, I'd believed we were inherently perfect, and that we had to keep coming back again and again until we recognized our innate perfection.

The answer lies within ourselves. If we can't find peace and happiness there, it's not going to come from the outside.

Meditation is for you to realise that the deepest nature of your existence is beyond thoughts and emotions, that it is incredibly vast and interconnected with all other beings.

If we greet situations with a positive attitude, we will eventually create positive returns. If we respond with a negative attitude, negative things will eventually come our way.

In the very deep darkness of this world, little pinpoints of light show up very brightly and can shine a long way.

Our pure awareness is not male or female.

The first thing is to learn how to quiet the mind, relax the mind, and bring the awareness to the front so that we are conscious of what we're doing when we're doing it without all the commentary.

Develop confidence in your innate qualities and believe that these qualities will be brought to fruition.

The Buddha himself said, "I still use conceptual thinking, but I'm not formed by it." And that's the Buddha.

Even if one isn't a committed Buddhist, it just helps us become better human beings.

We have produced many of our problems through our confused mental states.

Just as King Midas turned everything to gold, Stalin turned everything to mediocrity.

Hearing Mass is the ceremony I most favor during my travels. Church is the only place where someone speaks to me and I do not have to answer back.

When we know deep down that we're acting with integrity despite impulses to do otherwise, we feel gates of higher energy and inspiration open inside of us.

Throughout my life I have taken detours in acting and writing, but art remains my abiding passion.

When you have no money, you need invention.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

Politics is a lot of serendipity. You're in the right place and the right time and you've got the right message, and it either connects for you or, or it doesn't.

If I do do a sequel, I'm going to have to know for sure that the script is better than the original. So I'm going to be very careful about that because I'm not eager to repeat myself.

I think I write in order to discover on my shelf a new book that I would enjoy reading, or to see a new play that would engross me.