Embrace the glorious mess that you are

I can honestly say [that writing] is the best life there is, because you get to live within the realm of your own mind, and that is a profoundly rare human privilege.

I think how badly things can go wrong in our judicial system. All it took was one person saying that this was a deliberately set fire, and then a whole chain of information became malevolent.Criminal past - that worked all in their favor to create this "monster" - and they even used the word "monster." It's like, let's ensure that the public thinks he's an evil individual.

I like it when science and devotion find places of intersection.

I had a great teacher in India who said to me, 'If you think you're spiritual and evolved and enlightened, go home for Christmas.'

This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down.

We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses--one foot is on the horse called "fate," the other on the horse called "free will." And the question you have to ask every day is--which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it's not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?