Those who have most at stake in the old culture, or are most rigid in their beliefs, try to summon people back to the old ideas.'

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by agreement or by emotional appeal.

Your past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future.

The mind aware of itself is a pilot... vastly freer than a passenger mind.

Things fall apart, so they can fall together at a higher level of order.

The spiritual quest begins, for most people, as a search for meaning.

The other side of every fear is a freedom.

Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture, the assumption that aging means decline and poor health is probably the deadliest.

Risk always brings its own rewards: the exhilaration of breaking through, of getting to the other side; the relief of a conflict healed; the clarity when a paradox dissolves.

Making mental connections is our most crucial learning tool, the essence of human intelligence; to forge links; to go beyond the given; to see patterns, relationships, context.

Our biggest failure is our failure to see patterns.

I was taught growing up not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, to withdraw myself from the sinful 'others'. But we are all others. We are all sinners in someone's eyes.

I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.

You are the creator. Get out that old box of paints and brushes and start drawing love into your life.

True knowledge is a virtue of the talented, but harmful to those without discernment. Spring water free of impurity, entering the ocean, becomes undrinkable.

Only in art can you make something that no one wants and still be considered successful.

Since I wasn't able to leave a succession of beautiful lies, I want to leave the smidgen of truth that the falsehood of everything lets us suppose we can tell.

My standup persona is like I'll heighten things, but I'm observing the world as it is in sort of a heightened emotional state.

Well, after the divorce, I went home and turned all the lights on!

Losing gracefully is commended but never chosen.

I have liberal friends. They are misguided, they are wrong. I disagree with them. I don't want them to vote. I want them to go on vacation in November.