Nick Flynn Quotes

Just the service aspect of running a nonprofit is so gratifying because it takes the attention off yourself. I'm not an acting monk or anything. I'm not, like, the most well-adjusted actor. But it's really designed to focus on yourself, or it can be. So it's good to have something else to focus on that reminds you that it's not always about you.

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

Join me in my quest for a greater understanding of our existence. Join me in my desire for a greater self. Join me as I seek the humility to love and understand my fellow man.

Difficulty creates the opportunity for self-reflection and compassion.

The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power or goodness.

The more that we self-analyze ourselves, the nicer we are to people and to ourselves, and the more we understand each other.

When you practice Buddhism, you have to always self-reflect, and you can't avoid your problems. That makes me understand human beings better. I feel that the more I do that in my own life, the more I can see how to play a character.

I got a lot of paradoxes in my life. I guess I'm a real confused person, but there are some focused parts to my life now, and I'm slowly trying to put all the pieces back together.

A lot of what I've been learning in the last two years is due to therapy - about my sexuality, why things go wrong, why relationships haven't worked. It isn't anything to do with anybody else; it's to do with me.

You just do the best you can, and when you're able to connect with people, and when you do, it's just incredibly gratifying.

Everyone loses touch with their aspiration, and we need the heart to return to what we really care about. All of this is based on developing greater lovingkindness and compassion.

Buddhism has turned me on to my humanness, and is challenging my humanness so that I can become more human.

Women, the way I see it, are very evolved people. They're more mature, they're more aware of their feelings, in touch with their feelings. They're connected to things that matter more in life. They know what's important. Men basically run around like idiots until we meet somebody who can show us that those things are important.

Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.

All my shows are therapy, trying to navigate interesting subjects so I can work them out and to be honest and say some things are beyond the wit of this man.

To go into therapy is an adventure, not really to iron anything out.

Have you ever heard the expression: Walk a mile in my shoes, and then judge me? And write your own books.

It's good for everyone to understand that they are to love their enemies, simply because your enemies show you things about yourself you need to change. So in actuality enemies are friends in reverse.

At the end of the day, you have to find the humanity in you in each character.

I haven't changed much, over the years. I use less adjectives, now, and have a kinder heart, perhaps.

If I have not the power to put myself in the place of other people, but must be continually burrowing inward, I shall never be the magnanimous creative person I wish to be. Yet I am hypnotized by the workings of the individual, alone, and am continually using myself as a specimen.

There's a rebirth that goes on with us continuously as human beings. I don't understand, personally, how you can be bored. I can understand how you can be depressed, but I just don't understand boredom.

In my old age I've come to find that if you respect other people, you feel better about yourself.

In the past, I used to argue with those who didn't share my views. I felt this incredible need to 'make my point.' Now I live my life and do my best to be an example of what seems right to me.

The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.