"When Victoria told me how intensely she hated me, I kept the Beretta aimed at her face, but heard myself say, 'I don't hate you.'She called me an effing liar and said, 'Hate makes the world go around. Envy, lust and hate.'I stopped hating anyone the day when I realized hating can't restore to me anything that's lost."

"No-one can own our Lord Buddha. That would be a foolish claim, but the roads that lead to him, the Way... That is a different matter. They are all filled with toll-gates, like the roads of Japan, and the monks collect the fees."

"A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls... Saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?"