When you laugh at yourself, you gain perspective. Then you realize that the mistakes you made, as long as they didn't hurt anyone but yourself——well, you can forgive yourself for those.

Money and beauty are defenses against the sorrows of this world but neither can undo the past. Only time will conquer time. The way forward is the only way back to innocence and to peace.

His resiliency was not the resiliency of the dumb but of a lamb who can remember hurt but cannot sustain the anger or the bitterness that brittles the heart.

And because we have been given thought, will, and imagination, albeit on a human scale, we too have this power to create.

Then perhaps you shouldn't sleep. The imagination has terrifying power.

It's a world of sorrow, Oddie, because we make it so.

Living in a monastery, even as a guest rather than a monk, you have more opportunities than you might have elsewhere to see the world as it is, instead of through the shadow that you cast upon it.

Life had been hard on this girl, Jacob, but she had enough courage for an army.

Human beings not only can't bear too much reality, we flee from reality when someone doesn't force us close enough to the fire to feel the heat on our faces.

My imagination is as rich as my bank account is empty.

You can't fix things with a hug, but you can't make them any worse either.

Letter-writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company.

My loneliness ain't killing me no more.

All legends have a base in fact.

Living by the beach means feeling guilty about never going to the beach.

Be not for ever harassed by impotent desire.

I'm in a different position than most CEO's. I'm a founder. I'm not a hired CEO. Now, I can be fired by the board, but most CEO's are hired by the board.

Do you decide to observe? Or do you merely observe?

The impulse to mar and to destroy is as ancient and almost as nearly universal as the impulse to create. The one is an easier way than the other of demonstrating power.

When nothing makes sense and the world seems upside down, listen to your heart, it will never lie about your true feelings.

Christ is the sun, and all the watches of our lives should be set by the dial of his motion.