The whole problem of life is this: how to break out of one's own solitude, how to communicate with others.

Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.

Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.

The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own—the place where we live—and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves.

One day his fingers will grow knobby, he will start to sag. I pray to the goddesses, the gods, the eggs, the clouds, the trees. I pray to the wind that he will grow old and die well.

All the work I do is built on a foundation of loving-kindness. Love illuminates matters.

My body of work means nothing to me

I was strongly encouraged by a science teacher who took an interest in me and presented me with a key to the laboratory to allow me to work whenever I wanted.

The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are blindly adopted; the second wilfully preferred.

I had a fear of being alone.

The trouble with you, dear, is that you think an angel of the Lord as a creature with wings, whereas he is probably a scruffy little man with a bowler hat.

Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention.

When I was seventeen, I don't think I even knew what love was. But when it's right, it's right, and you just know it.

He alone is a redeemed being who causes no pain to others and avoids pain to himself.