Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.

What a liberation to realize that the ‚voice in my head‘ is not who I am. ‚Who am I, then?‘ The one who sees that.

I worked out a lot before I was 20. I was hard underneath. I had just a little padding. I was quilted. Always Chanel.

Do not laugh much or often or unrestrainedly.

In such a porcelain life, one likes to be sure that all is well lest one stumble upon one’s hopes in a pile of broken crockery.

People who don’t know the true character of God – who don’t believe He is merciful, gracious and slow to anger – can never have a close, personal, intimate relationship with Him.

I don’t think about the end game. I’ve got lots to occupy my mind. It’s the rage that keeps me going.

I’m not resigned, but I’m realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long. And the other wager is, the part of the wager, it’s a certainty you’ll have a terrible time and you may wish you were dying because it’s an awful process.

We’ve fallen into a trap of ever-widening orbits of contact, and there is a total disregard for the present moment.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

Each day provides its own gifts.

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

Like so many American families, our families weren’t asking for much. They didn’t begrudge anyone else’s success or care that others had much more than they did… in fact, they admired it.

I think money is a wonderful thing because it enables you to do things. It enables you to invest in ideas that don’t have a short-term payback.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.

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.

Walking is man’s best medicine.

I’m grateful for always this moment, the now, no matter what form it takes.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion’s roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

True happiness is… to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.

I don’t write so much now. I’m getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.

Day by day we should weigh what we have granted to the spirit of the world against what we have denied to the spirit of Jesus, in thought and especially in deed.

Falling in love and having a relationship are two different things.

When you practice gratefulness, there is a sense of respect toward others.

Wanting to feel good is synonymous with wanting to feel God.

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn’t exist except as a part of everything.

If someone has a really great boyfriend or career, I think, it’s cool that happens.

Then suddenly something just kicked me. I kind of woke up and realised that I was in a different atmosphere than you normally are. My immediate reaction was to back off, slow down.

I believe that my parents did wonderful things for us.

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.

When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention.

Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.

I don’t look at my old work. I mean, they made nice books; the books were made without me, the one from last year and the one from this year. I – personally, I’m not interested in my own past. I’m only interested in today – perhaps tomorrow.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‚I used everything you gave me‘.

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

Pride is an independent, me-oriented spirit. It makes people arrogant, rude and hard to get along with. When our heart is prideful, we don’t give God the credit and we mistreat people, looking down on them and thinking we deserve what we have.

This is not a bad life.

You might not have the things you want, but if you check carefully, you got all you need.

I’ve done everything every fat person ever has. I’ve tried every diet.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

I used to wonder if it was God’s plan that I should be alone for so much of my life. But I found peace. I found happiness within people and the world.

I think for my bones and my size, I better stay with my 60 kilo.

Let go of yesterday.

The only thing you ever have is now.

No boxer in the history of boxing has had Parkinson’s. There’s no injury in my brain that suggests that the illness came from boxing.

Attention to health is life’s greatest hindrance.

My wife dresses to kill. She cooks the same way.

I don’t think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It’s essentially just a long narrative form. What you use that long narrative form for can be very different.

As we dread any disease that undermines the health of the body, so should we deplore contention, which is a corroding canker of the spirit.

Naturally, there are times when every woman likes to be flattered… to feel she is the most important thing in someone’s world. Only a man can paint this picture.

If a woman can, by careful selection of a father and nourishment of herself, produce a citizen with efficient senses, sound organs and a good digestion, she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it.

To keep oneself safe does not mean to bury oneself.