What the Dalai Lama had to resolve was whether to stay in Tibet or leave. He wanted to stay, but staying would have meant the total destruction of Tibet, because he would have died and that would have ripped the heart out of his people.

I do know that some Buddhists are able to attain peace of mind.

Watching a Kubrick film is like gazing up at a mountaintop. You look up and wonder, how could anyone have climbed that high?

There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.

I certainly wasn't able to get it when I was a kid growing up on the Lower East Side; it was very hard at that time for me to balance what I really believed was the right way to live with the violence I saw all around me - I saw too much of it among the people I knew.

I tried for about two semesters in a preparatory seminary. But I was about 15 and didn't fully understand what a vocation means.

I prefer people who don't get caught, and if they do get caught, I prefer people who don't give in.