Peace Pilgrim Quotes

The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.

I remember once in junior high school, on a Friday, my mom came home from work and said to my brother and I, 'You know, between us, we have only 27 cents, but we have food in the refrigerator, we have our little garden out back, and we're happy, so we are rich.'

I'll dispose of my teeth as I see fit, and after they've gone, I'll get along. I started off living on gruel, and by God, I can always go back to it again.

In my entire life, any time I've ever lost something, I've gotten something even better going around the next corner. It's like one door closes and another door opens. As long as I can walk through the produce section in every grocery store in this country and eat the grapes that they're going to throw away, I know I can be fine.

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

I don't live for stuff and things, and if I had to live in a cardboard box, I would put curtains on it.

Our pleasures were simple - they included survival.

We were rather poor, but we always had what we needed.

We never complained, 'We don't have this or that.' Even though we had to plant certain things and harvest them to be able to eat, we never complained.

I got everything I need right here with me. I got air in my lungs, a few blank sheets of paper. I mean, I love waking up in the morning not knowing what's gonna happen or, who I'm gonna meet, where I'm gonna wind up. Just the other night I was sleeping under a bridge and now here I am on the grandest ship in the world having champagne with you fine people. I figure life's a gift and I don't intend on wasting it. You don't know what hand you're gonna get dealt next. You learn to take life as it comes at you... to make each day count.

The best place to succeed is where you are with what you've got.

Perhaps I am the turtle, able to live simply anywhere, even underwater for short periods, with my home on my back.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it.

I really didn't have any childhood. When you don't know where you are going to sleep for the night.. or find food.. you can't think with the mind of a child. You have to think with the mind of a man.

What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came.

I often think I am a better person because I lived for many years of my life with a flashlight. I have developed skills I did not think were possible - bathing with a cup of water by candlelight, for instance, and writing a story with a headlamp on.

I've worked as a labourer, driven taxis and school buses, and been a car mechanic - whatever I could do just to get by. But it does mean that I know a little bit about a lot of things.

If we had no hope - for a cure, for winning the lottery, for falling in love, for the end of war, for being free of abuse, or for having food, warmth, clothing, and shelter - we would have no reason to go on. What you hope for doesn't matter, but rather the essence of hope itself.

I enjoyed my life when I had nothing... and kinda like the idea of just being happy with me.

When I first came out, I was a film student, and my mom sewed clothes. I was already doing a million things then, whatever it took to survive. If I had to braid someone's hair to get one pound for my lunch money, that's what I did.

But I love the idea - whether it's in my work or where I live - exploring new frontier, and I like putting myself in strange places and trying to survive and figure things out and gather up an infrastructure. I like knowing that I could figure out a way to live anywhere.

True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.

My childhood was bittersweet in many ways. We moved around a lot. By the time I was 10, I had travelled thousands of miles, often on my own. My parents were like my friends, so it felt like I didn't really have parents at all. But in a crazy way that was very liberating. It forced me to be independent, maybe a leader, and certainly a survivor.

I'm so glad I never feel important, it does complicate life!

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.