Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.

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

Worry and reasoning are two of Satan’s most successful tools. He’ll get us started with one negative thought and then sit back and watch us finish ourselves off.

When it comes to everybody else’s thing and their lane and their timing, I’m never doing anything intentional to, like, come after somebody. That will always be my biggest mistake or anybody’s biggest mistake if that’s their intention.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

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

And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension.

Seeing Pax get extra-nervous about which shirt he is going to wear when he meets Aung San Suu Kyi, I get very moved. He rightfully doesn’t get nervous going to a movie premiere; he gets nervous going to meet her.

A person’s fears are lighter when the danger is at hand.

When people are very damaged, they can often meet the world with a kind of defiance.

I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I’m praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I’m grateful that I’m heard.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

I’m an expert typist. I learned in high school. I would close my eyes and just type without worrying about mistakes. I tried to penetrate my heart, and as I let my thoughts drift, things bubbled up to the surface.

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.

I believe that everyone experiences depression to some degree at some time in their lives. And there are probably millions of people who live with a low level of sadness and heaviness day in and day out.

When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‚I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.‘ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.

People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and the now.

Hatred is settled anger.

Find joy and solace in the simple, and cultivate your utopia by feeling the Tao in every cubic inch of space.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space where we choose our response.

If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don’t appreciate the moment until it’s passed.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

Our brains are either our greatest assets or our greatest liabilities.

I’m living in the present, thinking about the past, hoping for the future.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.

I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point.

Some people can just let things go, but I can’t, especially if there’s something that worries me or makes me sad.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

You practice mindfulness, on the one hand, to be calm and peaceful. On the other hand, as you practice mindfulness and live a life of peace, you inspire hope for a future of peace.

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 wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

You always have to remember that if you say something negative, it’s going to come back to haunt you.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

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.

He was so depressed, he tried to commit suicide by inhaling next to an Armenian.

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

Do not seek to bring things to pass in accordance with your wishes, but wish for them as they are, and you will find them.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

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.

Thoughts are fine when you don’t confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.

Don’t run if you can walk. Don’t walk if you can stand. Don’t stand if you can sit. Don’t sit if you can lie down.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind.

Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.

I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.

There are going to be good days and bad days. Bottom line.

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

I hesitate to use a pathologizing label, but underneath the so-called narcissistic personality is definitely shame and the paralyzing fear of being ordinary.

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.

Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.

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

I have inhaled, exhaled everything.

The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamours and interferes with the music I hear in my head.

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

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.

Everything’s intentional. It’s just filling in the dots.

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.

We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.