The emotional brain is highly attuned to symbolic meanings and to the mode Freud called the 'primary process' - the messages of metaphor, story, myth, the arts.

True compassion means not only feeling another's pain but also being moved to help relieve it.

Research shows that for jobs of all kinds, emotional intelligence is twice as important an ingredient of outstanding performance as cognitive ability and technical skill combined.

One way to boost our will power and focus is to manage our distractions instead of letting them manage us.

Simple inattention kills empathy, let alone compassion. So the first step in compassion is to notice the other's need. It all begins with the simple act of attention.

There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse.

There is zero correlation between IQ and emotional empathy... They're controlled by different parts of the brain.

Empathy represents the foundation skill for all the social competencies important for work.

As much as 80% of adult "success" comes from EQ.

One aspect of a successful relationship is not just how compatible you are, but how you deal with your incompatibility.

My hope was that organizations would start including this range of skills in their training programs - in other words, offer an adult education in social and emotional intelligence.

Om meditation eliminates rigid and fixed views about the world. It creates a spacious, flexible and open views about the world.

Why is it that drama always starts late? Whereas comedy always seems to have started already.

Before, singing was my life, my vocal chords used to lead the way. Now, I'm in-charge.

It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion.

Words without action are like wheels without traction. It is how you live that counts.

I resist the idea that travel writing has got to be factual.

There are so many separate selves; no one who writes creatively hasn't felt that.

[Nuclear weapons] now I think I mentioned around 27,000 and during the Cold War the total global arsenal was on the order of 70,000.

Honor, thou strong idol of man's mind.

A lot of performing instincts are involved in the business of direction, but so is analysis and having a sense of literature.