Meditation is a great way to keep my body well-centered while juggling shooting schedules and recording sessions.

As a human being, anger is a part of our mind. Irritation also part of our mind. But you can do – anger come, go. Never keep in your sort of – your inner world, then create a lot of suspicion, a lot of distrust, a lot of negative things, more worry.

Let us fill our hearts with our own compassion – towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

Precaution is better than cure.

I’m an early riser. I get up between five and six, have coffee, and read for a couple of hours before everyone else gets up.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

I am alone; I am always alone no matter what.

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

When we give ourselves the chance to let go of all our tension, the body’s natural capacity to heal itself can begin to work.

When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess.

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.

Peace begins with a smile.

Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Many people in this world are still so identified with every thought that arises in their head. There is not the slightest space of awareness there.

When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation – which is not blankness, nor the opposite of being positive, but a totally different state in which all thought has ceased – only then is it possible for that which is unnameable to come into being.

Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything – to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby?

I don’t think I could think of a single thing that’s more isolating than being famous.

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

I am in the fighting game. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t watch the news, I don’t care about politics, I don’t care about other sports. I don’t care about anything I don’t need to care about. This is my sport: it is my life. I study it; I think about it all the time. Nothing else matters.

I’ve been in beautiful landscapes where one is tempted to whip out a camera and take a picture. I’ve learned to resist that.

Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

Let me ask you a question: If you never ate a balanced diet, what would happen to your body? You know the answer: Eventually you’d grow weak; you might even open yourself to serious illness or disease. We all need a balanced diet if we are to stay healthy.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.

Meditation has been a loyal friend to me. It has helped me write my books.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

Chefs are nutters. They’re all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.

If I feel anxious every time someone is staring at me, well, I can’t control what they stare at, but my reaction is, I’m just not going to go outside the house. I’m going to stay in and chill. And when I do go out, I understand what comes along with that.

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy and serenity.

Fear makes us feel our humanity.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

I have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well.

All of our problems start in our minds.

I got my own back.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

Acting is just a process of relaxation, actually. Knowing the text so well and trusting that the instinct and the subconscious mind, whatever you want to call it, is going to take over.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

Sometimes, getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth is the hardest part of the day – it all just hurts.

Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system, and that is not attention.

I’m sure that at no point in my life could I ever have shown the kind of focus and discipline and commitment necessary to work a station at elBulli or Le Bernardin. No. That ain’t me.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story.

Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly.

Mortality is very different when you’re 20 to when you’re 50.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

I like the city. I like the concrete. I like big business. I like being a CEO of my own company and having a lot of responsibilities. At the same time, when I can go off with a backpack or off on a surfboard or even off on a run somewhere in the woods – that’s where I’m really happy.

Because my career is so important, I think I make a lot of – I wouldn’t call them sacrifices, but just concessions for my job. I love what I do, and I want to do it for a long time.

I tend not to look back and dwell on a project once it is finished.

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

Meditation is not following any system; it is not constant repetition and imitation. Meditation is not concentration.

People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

Never find fault with the absent.

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

Forever is composed of nows.