Quotes from Richard Gere

Maybe the Dalai Lama is the only person who is totally honest, and even with him, he's skillful not to hurt anybody. He's skillful.

I don't know any of us who are in relationships that are totally honest - it doesn't exist.

(Sometimes when) someone's directing for the first time, they're afraid to include everyone - they have to prove they're the director.

[on editing of the films] There is always a question of time, and the director. I've worked with a lot of directors who don't mind my involvement. They appreciated it.

If you can see the terrorists as a relative who's dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine and the medicine is love and compassion. There's nothing better.

I've got a lot of opportunities, a lot of love in my life, a lot of things going for me. Still, it's not complete. I know this is not the whole thing. There's much more.

I think most of our religious institutions are pretty corrupt, so they're not reliable. I think the Christian religion that I was brought up with has very little to do with Christ, really, and more an institutions that have built up around the church.

Tibetan Buddhism had an enormous impact on me.

If you have a built-in level of respect and trust and openness to essentially be yourself, it allows for a deeper uncensored communication [with your partner].

When someone has a strong intuitive connection, Buddhism suggests that it's because of karma, some past connection.

I'm younger than I once was. Internally. Less self-conscious. Less insecure.

It's human nature - we want to believe our children, our families, our President!

I think people do want to relate their entertainment to what's going on in their lives. Not everything.

People don't understand what happiness is, so they have an idea of what will make them happy, but it never does.

In a way, one gets stability from being able to order the rational mind.

My first encounter with Buddhist dharma would be in my early 20s. Like most young men, I was not particularly happy.

I can see the character in a photograph, in the way a guy stands or holds his hands, the way he buckles his belt. I fantasize a lot looking at photographs. I'm sure that doesn't work for many people.

If the work is going well and it's something that has value with some meaning to it, it gives back a lot.

I'm less needy about needing to express myself through acting. I have many different lives outside of this that are extremely fulfilling.

It's rare that a good writer will sit down and write a good script. Writers are greedy too, and they don't want to work without getting paid. But quality will find its way out.

I'm rarely in a situation where, if you have a good idea, it's not embraced. That's stupid. And I don't work with stupid people.

I do my work as an actor, but another part of my work goes to the piece as a whole. I can be fairly detached looking at my work and be brutal on myself.

When you work as an actor, you've got to feel safe even in what appears to be the simplest things.

Meditation is such a more substantial reality than what we normally take to be reality.