“The hard things are when you have to make your friends disappointed because you think you’re required, for example, by the law to do something that maybe is different than what you would do as a matter of public policy.”

“What you have to do with your mind, when your body is miserable, is to make it think of something else.”

“One of my guiding principles is don’t do anything that other people are doing. Always do something a little different if you can. The concept is that if you do it a little differently there is a greater potential for reward than if you the same thing that other people are doing. I think that this kind of goal for one’s work, having obviously the maximum risk, would have the maximum reward no matter what the field may be.”

“You might have one thing in your head, but the things you’re doing don’t really lead down the right road, necessarily. When you’re young, you don’t want to hear that. You think you can do everything, be all things.”

“I can tell you that once upon a time when I was doing public events people would ask me, "What do you think about the arts?, What do you think of the role of women?, What do you think of men?, What do you think of all of these things?", and now they ask one thing, and that one thing is this, "Is there hope?"”

“My friend Terry says that when you need to make a decision, in your work or otherwise, and you don’t know what to do, just do one thing or the other, because the worst that can happen is that you will have made a terrible mistake.”

“It’s a good thing when you don’t dare do something if you don’t think it’s right. But it’s not good when you think something’s not right because you don’t dare do it.”

“Sometimes you’re loved because of your weaknesses. What you can’t do is sometimes more compelling than what you can.”

“Practice does not mean that whatever you do, even lying down, is zazen. When the restrictions you have do not limit you, this is what we mean by practice….
When you sit, you will sit. When you eat, you will eat…. If you say,”It doesn’t matter,” it means that you are making some excuse to do something in your own way with your small mind. It means that you are to some particular thing or way. That is not what we mean when we say, “Just to sit is enough,” or “Whatever you do is zazen.””

“It's hard to explain," said Brutha. "But I think it's got something to do with how people should behave… you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time.”