“In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.”

“Casual murder, casual suicide, casual crime. Why not? If alternate universes are a reality, then cause and effect are an illusion. The law of averages is a fraud. You can do anything, and one of you will, or did.”

“They are all I have left—the stars and the memory of the many times I wished upon them. But with all those wishes, I asked for only one thing.

To see him again.

But I will not see him again. I do not see him now.”

“Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.”

“Dawn has come at last,
Twenty-five years, honey just in one night, oh yeah.
Well, Im twenty-five years older now
So I know we can't be right
And Im no better, baby,
And I cant help you no more
Than I did when just a girl.”

“One year of life is worth more than twenty years of hibernation.”

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

“I'm an old, superstitious Arab, and I believe in our proverbs. There's one that says, 'Everything that happens once can never happen again. But anything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”

“I never made more effort than I did when practicing under U Pandita. But most of this effort arose from the very illusion of bondage to the self that I was seeking to overcome. The model of this practice is that one must climb the mountain so that freedom can be found at the top. But the self is already an illusion, and that truth can be glimpsed directly, at the mountain's base or anywhere else along the path. One can then return to this insight, again and again, as one's sole method of meditation—thereby arriving at the goal in each moment of actual practice.”

“Though many illusions are of a character we should gladly cherish, yet the sooner we lose some of them, the sooner we gain the power of seeing clearly into things. The one who possesses least has the best chance of becoming wise. The man who travels, and reflects, loses illusions faster than he who stays at home.”