Mind over mattress.

Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.

I really concentrate on what’s on my plate at the moment and do the very best I can.

You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

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.

You can’t take care of charity unless you take care of yourself first.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

I love a Hebrew National hot dog with an ice-cold Corona – no lime. If the phone rings, I won’t answer until I’m done.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice… that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

The story with anorexic girls – nobody works with anorexic girls. That has nothing to do with fashion.

We have an epidemic of insecure people in our society today.

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.

Your entire life only happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself. Yet, people live as if the opposite were true and treat the present moment as a stepping stone to the next moment – a means to an end.

I have a little bit of PTSD when I hear a big bang or a loud noise or keys – I jump out of my skin.

Meditation is to get insight, to get understanding and compassion, and when you have them, you are compelled to act.

When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, ‚I don’t have time.‘ But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.

There is so much that people take for granted.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

If I didn’t have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.

To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

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 you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

He best keeps from anger who remembers that God is always looking upon him.

I have no trouble sleeping.

‚Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.

I’ve had no contact with my daughter for years. That’s her choice. Anyway, you move on. If people don’t want to bother with me, fine. You know, God bless them, and move on.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

The power of our thoughts may never be measured or appreciated, but it became obvious to me as a young boy that there was value and power in being aware of my thoughts and how I expressed myself.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

I am confident that nobody… will accuse me of selfishness if I ask to spend time, while I am still in good health, with my family, my friends and also with myself.

I’ve learned people are watching, so don’t do nothing stupid.

I tend to stay up late, not because I’m partying but because it’s the only time of the day when I’m alone and don’t have to be performing.

I don’t know how to live good. I only know how to suffer.

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

Guarding your heart and protecting your dignity are a little bit more important than clarifying the emotions of someone who’s only texting you back three words. I’ve learned that from trying to figure out people who don’t deserve to be figured out.

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

Our present moment is a mystery that we are part of. Here and now is where all the wonder of life lies hidden. And make no mistake about it, to strive to live completely in the present is to strive for what already is the case.

Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.

If you want to be a voice for peace in the world, begin by making peace a permanent condition of your own life.

Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.

Buddhism teaches us not to try to run away from suffering. You have to confront suffering. You have to look deeply into the nature of suffering in order to recognize its cause, the making of the suffering.

To be awake is to be alive.

Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‚yours,‘ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o’clock is a scoundrel.

I love to put on lotion. Sometimes I’ll watch TV and go into a lotion trance for an hour. I try to find brands that don’t taste bad in case anyone wants to taste me.

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

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

I’m a super-duper over-analyzer. You mix that with self-doubt and pressure, and that’s never healthy.