The courage to work with ourselves comes as basic trust in ourselves, as a sort of fundamental optimism.

The bad news is you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there's no ground.

To be a spiritual warrior, one must have a broken heart; without a broken heart and the sense of tenderness and vulnerability, your warriorship is untrustworthy.

In the garden of gentle sanity, May you be bombarded by coconuts of wakefulness.

We are always in transition. If you can just relax with that, you'll have no problem.

We cannot change the way the world is, but by opening ourselves to the world as it is, we may find that gentleness, decency and bravery are available - not only to us, but to all human beings.

You are sitting on the earth and you realize that this earth deserves you and you deserve this earth. You are there - fully, personally, genuinely.

A great deal of the chaos in the world occurs because people don't appreciate themselves.

The emphasis on practice is because it is the only time in your life you can steer your karmic situation.

Gentle day's flower - The hummingbird competes With the stillness of the air.

We are threatened by the now so we jump to the past or the future.

The freedom of the open road is seductive, serendipitous and absolutely liberating.

To be left with only the trace of a memory is to gaze at an armchair that's still molded to the form of a love who has left never to return: It is to grieve, dear reader, it is to weep.

I'm trying to think overall. Some of our stories [Black Mirror], I think you're right in that they don't tend to have a message.

Anthropology never has had a distinct subject matter, and because it doesn't have a real method, there's a great deal of anxiety over what it is

The greatest obstacle to those who hope to reform American education is complacency.

Never tell anyone that you're writing a book, going on a diet, exercising, taking a course, or quitting smoking. They'll encourage you to death.

I feel like it's hard to get into historical novels where you know what the story is far too well.

All you need is a bad angle and suddenly youre 30 pounds overweight.

The United States has grown into a remarkable nation specifically because of our independent spirit and free market.