I think [Dalai Lama]is far and away the most solid, deep-thinking, far-sighted politician I've met, and I've been a journalist for 26 years for Time magazine, so I've met a lot of politicians.

Every day there are small moments when we have a choice: will we take in more stuff, or just clear our minds out for a bit?

What more could one ask of a companion? To be forever new and yet forever steady, to be strange and familiar all at once, with enough change to quicken my mind, enough steadiness to give sanctuary to my heart. The books on my shelf never asked to come together and they would not trust or want to listen to one another. But each is a piece of a stained-glass whole, without which I wouldn’t make sense to myself or to the world outside.

Living here in California, I think one of the scariest things about California is the fact that it is rewriting its script and changing constantly and so many people don't know who they will be and who they will be with a year from now.

But it’s only by having some distance from the world that you can see it whole, and understand what you should be doing with it.

As soon as I'm on the road, I see, often palpably, that I know nothing at all, which is always a great liberation.

Movement is only as good as the sense of stillness that you can bring to it to put it into perspective.