Suffering occurs when your ideas about how things ought to be don't match how they really are.

Disappointment is just the action of your brain readjusting itself to reality after discovering things are not the way you thought they were.

How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? The plum tree in the garden!

You can always improve your situation. But you do so by facing it, not by running away.

Compassion is the ability to see what needs doing right now and the willingness to do it right now.

You can't function in society if you don't involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you're playing a game.

The truth comes when you can see that your self-image is just a convenient reference point and nothing more, and that you as you had imagined yourself do not exist.

Do what you do as well as you possibly can. That's Buddhist morality.

Truly compassionate action arises spontaneously without thought and is carried out in real action with no anticipation of reward and, indeed, no concept of a doer of that action.

Your role is to do and say the things that need to be done and said from your unique perspective.

Reality's all you've got. But here's the real secret, the real miracle: it's enough.

A man with integrity, with vision, with a sense of purpose and place in the world as exactly himself. That's the kind of man I'll settle for.

The gift we can offer others is so simple a thing as hope.

They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.

Drucker said: 'If you weren't already in this business, would you enter it today? And if not, what are you going to do about it?' ... Simple, right? But incredibly powerful.

I love having other people sing my songs.

The one thing that makes 'Torchwood' work so brilliantly and makes it a little bit above the rest of all other sci-fi dramas out there is that we have a sense of humour.

Trusting Him to work out your circumstances instead of using your own might and power will bring deep satisfying joy into your life.

In science, the old men are usually wrong. But in politics, the old men are wise, counsel caution, and in the end are often right.

Pretty, pretty please, don't you ever ever feel like you're less than, less than perfect.

I am now known as Nina Conti's father and it's wonderful.