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.

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, 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?

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.

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

I've had an amazing professional life, personal life, but at 64 to have a son who gives us that much love and enjoyment is, wow!

I think when you move past your fear and you go after your dreams wholeheartedly, you become free.

You take one bomber and deploy him in Baghdad, and another is manufactured in Riyadh the next day. It's exactly like when you take the toy off the shelf at Wal-Mart and another is made in Shen Zhen the next day.

In my very early days as a journalist, as a cub reporter on a local newspaper, I used to cover the district courthouse in Limerick city - all human life passed through that establishment, and my time there remains a source of inspiration.

It's while writing that suddenly a point of view appears: 'So, that's what I really thought about this thing'. Then it feels part of me.

Friends are born not made.

A fine memoir is to a fine novel as a well-wrought blanket is to a fancifully embroidered patchwork quilt. The memoir, a logical creation, dissects and dignifies reality. Fiction, wholly extravagant, magnifies it and gives it moral shape. Fiction has no practical purpose. Fiction, after all, is art.

The thing is, and Americans are starting to realize this now, that while street gangs are violent, the Democrats and Republicans are worse. They are worse because their decisions affect your life.

I've always had to prove myself to people growing up. I had to show them that I could do this and I could do that and paying no mind to what the critics said.

Americans have the right under the Second Amendment to own firearms, and that is not going to change.

My family owned a gelateria business, so as a kid, I would always design ice cream cones. If you want to transform a shoe from design into a properly wearable product, however, you need technical knowledge. So I worked for four years inside a local shoe company.

In nature, there is less death and destruction than death and transmutation.

The French revolution was a machine invented and constructed for the purpose of manufacturing liberty but it had neither lever cogs nor adjusting powers and the consequences were that it worked so rapidly that it destroyed its own inventors and set itself on fire.

The human voice is the first and most natural musical instrument, also the most emotional.

If I would use anything from 'The Little Prince,' even some little quote, it's all copyrighted in France. Like Walt Disney in this country, it's a national treasure.

I made every single piece myself, each individual component, so it was quite time consuming.

I don't think people spend nearly enough time thinking about what they like and what they're good at.

I think my life in general, like that of any human being, has highs and lows, has moments of great light and moments of great darkness.

In the midst of overwhelming noise and distraction the voice of story is calling us to remember our true selves.

I worked a lot with Nick Knight and John Galliano when John was at Dior. He also made my wedding dress. He'll always hold a special place; I have most of my memorable, iconic moments in fashion with him.

We just wanna see where we stand at right now with our fans.

My friends all tell me I was born with a horseshoe up my butt.