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.

I went to see ‚Phantom of the Opera‘ with my grandma and my mom when I was very little. The stage, the voice, the music… Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been a massive inspiration to me for some time – the storytelling, that deliciously somber undertone in his music.

Don’t just let the devil use your mind as a garbage dump.

Don’t wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.

I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.

The deferring of anger is the best antidote to anger.

Unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.

Cast away your sloth, your lethargy, your coldness, or whatever interferes with your chaste and pure love for Christ, your soul’s husband. Make Him the source, the center, and the circumference of all your soul’s range of delight.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

I want to be like Bruce Springsteen or something, making songs that are relevant.

If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person.

A man’s delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.

Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.

Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes.

My mother had a saying: ‚Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.‘

Don’t wait to be successful at some future point. Have a successful relationship with the present moment and be fully present in whatever you are doing. That is success.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

Listen; there’s a hell of a good universe next door: let’s go.

I can make something magical and wonderful out of nothing.

No one was ever great without some portion of divine inspiration.

My whole thing is to inspire, to better people, to better myself forever in this thing that we call rap, this thing that we call hip hop.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.

Never take anything for granted.

It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.

What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.

Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; it is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased.

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

I think that everybody needs four things in life. Everybody needs something to do regardless of age. Everybody needs someone to love. Everybody needs something to hope for, and, of course, everybody needs someone to believe in.

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It’s a death trap.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

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

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

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.

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

We based the look on rock ‚n roll right from the beginning.

It was something I never expected to – I never expected the book would sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers.

This is love: the flowering of love is meditation.

How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.

I’ve done many ads because that’s my new career. It’s an inspiring extension for my mind.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

As scientists, we step on the shoulders of science, building on the work that has come before us – aiming to inspire a new generation of young scientists to continue once we are gone.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.