Zach Braff

My mother’s a psychologist, my stepfather’s a psychologist, my stepmother is a therapist and my dad’s a lawyer. So it was all prominent in my life. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know someone on some form of prescription medicine.

[On working with Woody Allen] That was a very surreal experience: I had studied the script right down to the punctuation marks, and then he would say ‘we’re not going to say what’s on the page, and you don’t really have to either, try to keep up.’

[On Hollywood’s initial response to his Garden State script] Everyone said no. Everyone with a date book and a phone in Los Angeles said no.

I’m kind of jealous of the life I’m supposedly leading.

When you are writing a script, you can’t help but stop and daydream about which actors are going to play the parts, and I kind of imagined Natalie Portman. Not just because she is beautiful, because obviously she is, but she is a wonderful actress who hasn’t had a chance in a long time to show the world how talented she is.

Everyone has an idea that they think would be a great movie. Everyone has a cousin who they think you should work with. Everyone has a warped vision of Hollywood and what success in Hollywood is like. That you love cocaine and that you spend every night in orgies with models. If only it were true.

Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

We’ve had the goddam Ages of Faith, we’ve had the goddam Age of Reason. This is the Age of Publicity.

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion – several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.

Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?

The ordinary mind is the way.

A miracle is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles. Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.

The valley stream’s rushing sound is the eloquent tongue of Buddha. The mountain’s vibrant colours are nothing but the Buddha’s form.

Right now, it’s like this.

Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea.

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

As I reminded my girls, these aren’t problems. These are very high class problems. Because of where Barack and I come from, we just couldn’t sympathize with their… It was like, ‘Girl, you live in the White House. You do not get to complain about this.

Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.

Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity.

A man who is good enough to go to heaven is not good enough to be a clergyman.

The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of uniting with something.