Zen has nothing to teach us in the way of intellectual analysis; nor has it any set doctrines which are imposed on its followers for acceptance.

Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don't serve them tea.

When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

Unless we are willing to encourage our children to reconnect with and appreciate the natural world, we can't expect them to help protect and care for it.

When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, "What do I need to get to be happy?" The question becomes, "What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have?"

Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.

Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.

The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.

If you can just appreciate each thing, one by one, then you will have pure gratitude. Even though you observe just one flower, that one flower includes everything

The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.

Wherever you go you will find your teacher, as long as you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time - beautiful?

...nobody ever takes from the desert anything but aridity and monsters...

Let's make it flashy!

You people married to Italian men, you know what it's like.

Anything I do, I always have a reason for.

I have great respect for people who are in the front lines and the trenches of trying to enact social change. I am far lazier than that.

Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence?

If people of India can reach Mars with minimal expenditure, why can they not keep their streets and colonies clean.

You can't always go to the well and have things be funny.

A time will come when the eye of man will perceive colors as feelings within itself.