When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‚I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.‘ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.

To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

As you think, so shall you become.

My wish is to bring my heroes to the big screen, and many of them have already appeared in my films.

Make bold choices and make mistakes. It’s all those things that add up to the person you become.

I don’t know if I particularly want to be remembered for anything. I personally do not think I’m a great gift to the world. I’ve been very fortunate.

If you’ve lost your spirit, even living in the richest country in the world can’t help you become rich.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything – diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.

When you find a guy who is powerful, a big father figure, you latch onto him immediately.

He who molds the public sentiment… makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.

People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don’t suffer anymore.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.

I’m not critic-proof, and I still take it personally, but I take it less personally now.

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

I always entertain the notion that I’m wrong, or that I’ll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I’ll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

I believe that the greatest gift you can give your family and the world is a healthy you.

The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

I used to have a real problem with self-pity. Every time the devil would throw a pity party, I would attend.

You should never give up your inner self.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.

Why am I a star? It can’t be because of looks.

It would have been difficult to have an ugly daughter.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else’s ideas about you, but what’s important is how you feel about yourself – for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

When I was 8 years old, it mattered what my favorite singer said and wore and expressed opinions about.

One mustn’t close one’s eyes to difficulty and to shortcomings; the more one recognizes them, the less they upset one.

I have to tell you, my seven-year-old granddaughter said to my daughter, her mother, ‚So what’s the big deal about Grandma Maddy having been Secretary of State? Only girls are Secretaries of State.‘ Most of her lifetime, it’s true. But at the time it really was a big deal.

The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.

Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

He didn’t come out of my belly, but my God, I’ve made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride.

We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation.

There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can’t have.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

I worked with someone who told me they’d never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

You might win some, you might lose some. But you go in, you challenge yourself, you become a better man, a better individual, a better fighter.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

I still have mixed feelings about what growing up is – this thing that happens to everyone, so I’ve heard.

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

We are not makers of history. We are made by history.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

If you’re not ready for everything, you’re not ready for anything.

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy; Dear Jack, Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.

I have a full and satisfying life. My work and my family are very important to me.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.