Every day without fail one should consider himself as dead. There is a saying of the elders that goes, 'Step from under the eaves and you're a dead man. Leave the gate and the enemy is waiting.' This is not a matter of being careful. It is to consider oneself as dead beforehand.

Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day one should meditate on being carried away by surging waves, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease.

Human life is truly a short affair. It is better to live doing the things that you like.

One must know the so-called 'lesson of a downpour.' A man, caught in a sudden rain en route, dashes along the road not to get wet or drenched. Once one takes it for granted that in rain he naturally gets wet, he can be in a tranquil frame of mind even when soaked to the skin. This lesson applies to everything.

I feel like a lot of people have a hard time finding what they do, or they have a job or career and not a passion. That's miserable for me. Just find your purpose; understand that you have one life to live.

I get sent a lot of scripts which feature him as a kind of all-purpose Victorian literary character and really understand little, if anything, about him, his life or his books.

If a hero is a person on which you've made an explicit choice model yourself, mine is my father for showing me how to live a life of substance.

There's a lot of wisdom that my dad and my grandparents and my uncle have been able to impart on me, and what I've treasured the most is I've seen examples in my life of people embracing their creativity, not feeling insecure about their artistic inclinations.