Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.

Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don't serve them tea.

When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

Unless we are willing to encourage our children to reconnect with and appreciate the natural world, we can't expect them to help protect and care for it.

When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, "What do I need to get to be happy?" The question becomes, "What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have?"

Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.

Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.

The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.

If you can just appreciate each thing, one by one, then you will have pure gratitude. Even though you observe just one flower, that one flower includes everything

The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.

Wherever you go you will find your teacher, as long as you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

Love is more than love, it is the ultimate passion and power.

I don't use photographs because photographs don't give me the kind of information I need.

There is no need to express art in terms of nature. It can perfectly well be expressed in terms of geometry and the exact sciences.

I use cinematic things in a theatrical way on stage, and in film I use theatrical techniques in a cinematic way.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.

... women have their roots in the ground, and often those roots are starved and ravaged, yet there is not a human alive who cannot reach and touch, with... her fingers, the very top of God's rainbow.

I want men to be more chic - and Japanese style has that kind of sophisticated elegance.

It is the calm, forgiving, equable, well-balanced mind that does the greatest amount of work.

Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed.