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.

The one thing that I keep learning over and over again is that I don’t know nothing. I mean, that’s my life lesson.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

Sexism is everywhere, bro. I don’t know if it’s ever not somewhere.

Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.

I’ve had a few semi-toxic relationships, but it’s not what I look for when I’m seeing someone.

It is hard sometimes to always be at the centre of attention, but when you talk about me you also have to talk about the climate.

When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‚I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,‘ you just scream.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

The only thing you ever have is now.

I could never give relationship advice to anybody!

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

I’m not a New Age person, but I do believe in meditation, and for that reason I’ve always liked the Buddhist religion. When I’ve been to Japan, I’ve been to Buddhist temples and meditated, and I found that rewarding.

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

I’m one of the slowest drivers on the road. I mosey along. If you’re doing anything too fast, including living life too fast, that creates sudden death. If I have to be somewhere on time, I make sure I leave early enough.

I talk to myself all the time. Just make sure you answer.

How about a little noise. How do you expect a man to putt?

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

A lot of times, people make other people responsible for their joy: ‚You’re not making me happy, you’re not doing this, you’re not doing that.‘

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

It is important for you to know who you are and who you may become. It is more important than what you do, even as vital as your work is and will be.

There are phases in life which surface at times, and it makes you understand that despite you working hard, everything what you are doing is probably not enough. That’s when you need to look around, and beyond.

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

I was never particularly fond of my voice.

Life tends to be an accumulation of a lot of mundane decisions, which often gets ignored.

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

If you cannot concentrate, you are not so happy.

The Canteen Boy, the reason you feel bad for him and you can laugh is because he, and I guess a lot of my characters, they don’t notice they’re getting made fun of. So they’ll say something back that’s not that great a quip, but in their mind they won the argument.

I think the perception of peace is what distracts most people from really having it.

Before you start a goal – let’s take care of our insecurities because they are going to surface when you put yourself in the crucible and you’re suffering.

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?

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

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one’s own desires through which one listens.

There’s a deceptive sin that can keep us from walking in love: pride. It’s deceptive because when you have pride, you’re usually too proud to admit it. I know this because I used to have teachings on pride and they didn’t sell well.

Back when I was in school, few people understood dyslexia and what to do for it. My teachers thought I was lazy and not very clever, and I got bored easily… thinking of all the things I could do once I left school. I couldn’t always follow what was going on.

The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you, it’s courage and daring. In me, it’s weakness.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

Only the shallow know themselves.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

Millions of people live their entire lives without finding themselves. But it is something I must do.

When there’s so much left to do, why spend your time focusing on things you’ve already done, counting trophies or telling stories about the good old days?

I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.

I do not love to be printed on every occasion, much less to be dunned and teased by foreigners about mathematical things or to be thought by our own people to be trifling away my time about them when I should be about the king’s business.

I don’t like to read things that people write about me. I’d rather read what kids have to say about me because it’s not their profession to do that.

The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?