[The Dalai Lama] told me some years ago, "I've made every concession to China, and I've been as open and tolerant as I could, and still things get worse in Tibet." If you look at it from one point of view, as he himself says, his monastic position of forbearance and nonviolence hasn't reaped any benefits. And yet, he's thinking in terms of the long term, of centuries.

A comma . . . catches the gentle drift of the mind in thought, turning in on itself and back on itself, reversing, redoubling, and returning along the course of its own sweet river music; while the semicolon brings clauses and thoughts together with all the silent discretion of a hostess arranging guests around her dinner table.

Dalai Lama has made new opportunities for women that they never had in Tibet, introduced science into the monks' curriculum and had Tibetan students in exile take their classes in English after the age of ten so that they will know more about the outside world. But one of the great things he's done is to bring all the Tibetan groups together in exile, as perhaps they couldn't have been when they weren't in exile and they weren't under such pressure.

Any school would gain, if the students began the day with meditation, cleared their heads and got themselves centered.

You rebel against your parents until you become them. One day you look in the mirror and you see your father's face.

Perhaps the greatest danger of our global community is that the person in LA thinks he knows Cambodia because he's seen The Killing Fields on-screen, and the newcomer from Cambodia thinks he knows LA because he's seen City of Angels on video.

Writing of every kind is a way to wake oneself up and keep as alive as when one has just fallen in love.