"Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony."

"In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity."

"I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: 'Oh my God, what a blessing.' Then you realise it's important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe."

"I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed."

"It is a timeless truth that clear thinking requires courage even more than intellect."

"To speak the truth in a season of deceit is an act of supreme bravery. Such is the immutable nature of understanding — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth - often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable."

"I'm a lapsed Buddhist like I'm a lapsed Catholic. I take it to a point."