Nonattachment to results + self compassion = a supple relentlessness that is hard to match. Push hard, play to win, but don’t assume the fetal position if things don’t go your way.

Our entire lives are governed by a voice in our heads. This voice is engaged in a ceaseless stream of thinking—most of it negative, repetitive, and self-referential.

The ego is never satisfied. No matter how much stuff we buy, no matter how many arguments we win or delicious meals we consume, the ego never feels complete.

The ego thrives on drama. It keeps our old resentments and grievances alive through compulsive thought.

“When you have one foot in the future and the other in the past, you piss on the present.”

As best I could understand it, the Buddha’s main thesis was that in a world where everything is constantly changing, we suffer because we cling to things that won’t last.

We suffer because we get attached to people and possessions that ultimately evaporate.

The route to true happiness was to achieve a visceral understanding of impermanence, which would take you off the emotional roller coaster and allow you to see your dramas and desires through a wider lens.

This is where the Buddhists diverged quite dramatically from self-help: They had an actual, practical program. It wasn’t expensive gimcrackery. No spendy seminars, no credit cards required. It was totally free.

In a nutshell, mindfulness is the ability to recognize what is happening in your mind right now—anger, jealousy, sadness, the pain of a stubbed toe, whatever—without getting carried away by it.

We can do more than just think; we also have the power simply to be aware of things—without judgment, without the ego. This is not to denigrate thinking, just to say that thinking without awareness can be a harsh master.

Picture the mind like a waterfall, they said: the water is the torrent of thoughts and emotions; mindfulness is the space behind the waterfall.

RAIN. R: recognize A: allow I: investigate N: non-identification

Bingo: respond not react.

Sam once said in his speech to the angry, befuddled atheists, learn how to be happy “before anything happens.” This happiness is self-generated, not contingent on exogenous forces; it’s the opposite of “suffering.”

The real superpower of meditation is not just to manage your ego more mindfully but to see that the ego itself has no actual substance. Close your eyes and look for it, and you won’t find any “self” you can put your finger on.

... ask yourself the following question: ‘Is this useful’?

Our life is the manifestation of our minds.

The pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness.

The brain, it turns out, is constantly changing in response to experience. It’s possible to sculpt your brain through meditation just as you build and tone your body through exercise—to grow your gray matter the way doing curls grows your bicep.

The brain, the organ of experience, through which our entire lives are led, can be trained. Happiness is a skill.

Studies showed that the best way to engineer an epiphany was to work hard, focus, research, and think about a problem—and then let go. Do something else.

Mindfulness, I had come to believe, could, in fact, change the world.

“Practice of compassion is ultimately benefit to you. So I usually describe: we are selfish, but be wise selfish rather than foolish selfish.”

This clunky phrase “nonattachment to results” was my long-sought Holy Grail, the middle path, the marriage of “the price of security” and “the wisdom of insecurity.”

1. Don’t Be a Jerk 2. When Necessary, Hide the Zen 3. Meditate 4. The Price of Security Is Insecurity—Until It’s Not Useful 5. Equanimity Is Not the Enemy of Creativity 6. Don’t Force It 7. Humility Prevents Humiliation 8. Go Easy with the Internal Cattle Prod 9. Nonattachment to Results 10. What Matters Most?

“Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.”

Baseball has been good to me since I quit trying to play it.

Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which way was forward.

Let the blood and the bruises define your legacy.

I don't think I'm the right man to adapt a book.

The Nature Lover is not looking for mere facts but for meanings, for something he can translate into terms of his own life.

Japan is an important ally of ours. Japan and the United States of the Western industrialized capacity, 60 percent of the GNP, two countries. That's a statement in and of itself.

Because as an only child, you have your own little world.

My old man taught me a lot of stuff in his death that I don't even know if he would have been able to teach me had he been alive. And that was to never do stuff that can jeopardize the people you love and hurt them.

Gary Ross is amazing. He's just - he always has a billion ideas of what he wants, but has a very clear perspective also; he just makes it work. He really does. He's trying different things and making everything look amazing.

You just have to make sure the model you're working on does not undersell your product.

The Liberal Party of Canada, heading into an election, at the last minute they always stand up and they say: We know there's people out there that want to vote NDP and God love you. But if you vote for them you're throwing your vote away.

By never marrying, I ended up never divorcing, but I also failed to accumulate that brocade of civility and padlock of security - kids you do or don't want, Tiffany silver you never use - that makes life complete.

My feelings on homosexuality are unequivocal. I have absolutely no problem with it whatsoever. My only reservation is marriage.

I get into lab early and leave a bit early, too. So I like to have an hour or two before everybody comes in.

It's what all writers dream of, that our work finds a measure of immortality that long outlives the words of any critic.

I rise to taste the dawn, and find that love alone will shine today.

I never want to stop making memories with you.

We have our own reasons for what's motivating us right now.

Baby in the tummy its all up to mommy. But once the babys had its bragging rights for Dad.

I think we still believe that ambition is for boys.

Feast of the Holy Cross Does not every man feel, that there is corruption enough within him to drive him to the commission of the greatest enormities, and eternally to destroy his soul?

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.