Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.

I’m going to stay active as long as I can politically, and with the Carter Center primarily, and if I’m able mentally and physically, will continue to be quite active.

When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.

I felt like I had a really bad case of writer’s block… Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can’t get it out, I start feeling bad about myself – a lot of self-loathing.

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

Men are only as great as they are kind.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

Cycling can be lonely, but in a good way. It gives you a moment to breathe and think, and get away from what you’re working on.

The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course, you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place, you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.

Falling in love and having a relationship are two different things.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

I’ve tried everything. I’ve done therapy, I’ve done colonics. I went to a psychic who had me running around town buying pieces of ribbon to fill the colors in my aura. Did the Prozac thing.

Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners.

Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

Seeing Pax get extra-nervous about which shirt he is going to wear when he meets Aung San Suu Kyi, I get very moved. He rightfully doesn’t get nervous going to a movie premiere; he gets nervous going to meet her.

Alas, I am a woman friendless, hopeless!

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

I don’t digest things with my mind.

Being a Puerto Rican artist, I support all kinds of projects that are developed on my beautiful island that in some way or another put our Puerto Rican flag up.

A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

Give yourself more opportunities for privacy, when you are not bombarded with duties and obligations. Privacy is not a rejection of those you love; it is your deserved respite for recharging your batteries.

I’ve had sleep paralysis.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

I cry so much less than I used to. I used to be one of the most teary people.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

Sometimes, women in families put themselves last until it manifests itself in their own health.

It’s very inexpensive to give a compliment.

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.

Those movies sure got me into a rut.

When you think about it, three of our biggest financial decisions in life are made at times of peak emotional excitement: deciding to get married, buying a home, and having kids.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

There are so many men and women who hold no distinctive positions but whose contribution towards the development of society has been enormous.

When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.

The important thing is that men should have a purpose in life. It should be something useful, something good.

Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac.

Men don’t really like skinny, do they?