“Success doesn't come to you; you go to it.”

“If you go to war with your mind, you will always be at war.”

“If it is going to kill you,” Enso Roshi says, “then let it kill you.”

“I don’t know where I’m going on this path. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. You had to be lost, before you could be found. These are the truths. You had to be confused, before you could find clarity; you had to suffer, before you could find peace. These were the only ways, life could happen. Of course you were confused before you found clarity. If you weren't confused, then you would already be clear. Of course you were lost before you were found. If you were already found, then you wouldn't be lost. Of course there would be suffering before peace. If there was already peace, then there wouldn't be suffering. One necessarily came before the other.”

“Why hold secrets? Why harbor anything? Let me just share everything with you. Let me just talk. Let me let go of the censor that is within me ... I’m tired of trying to be someone other than who I am.”

“And could you, from a place of love, actually stand up and, use force, to give someone back, the suffering, they were trying to put on you? Would I do it? Maybe it would even be, an act of fierce compassion, as Enso Roshi sometimes talked about, to not take it any more. To not cow down, anymore. To let my father know, the tyrant, the aggressor, that if he hits me, I’m going to hit back, and hard.”

“You just do it, then if you die, you die.”