But your questions, which are unanswerable without exception, all spring from the same erroneous thinking.

Honestly, I’ve been thinking lately about how boring I am. When I do get time to myself, I watch TV.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

I think I have a dualistic nature.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.

Solutions are not the answer.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

I’m always cast in these strange men… that’s not me, really.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

I accept chaos, I’m not sure whether it accepts me.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

Maybe I should say that memory interests me a great deal, because I think we all tell stories of our lives to ourselves as well as to other people. Well, women do, anyway. Women do this a lot. And I think when men get older, they do this too, but maybe in slightly different terms.

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

I’m super self-critical, which I think is good, because then I get exactly what I want. I’m critical of other people, too – I try not to be, though.

Go to you bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

I really didn’t consider myself happy or unhappy.

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

I was a thug.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?

One of the greatest lessons of my own life was learning to turn the inner rampage of hatred and anger toward my own father for his reprehensible behavior and abandonment of his family into an inner reaction more closely aligned with God and God-realized love.

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.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

If you carefully consider what you want to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

Throughout my years in business, I discovered something. I would always ask why you do things. The answers that I would invariably get are: ‚Oh, that’s just the way things are done around here.‘ Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks very deeply about things in business.

I don’t really get nervous that much, or if I do, only I know. It’s all inside me. I am good at hiding everything.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

I’m all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

I always thought it was wrong for me to take credit for the work that I did. I don’t think that anymore.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

I listen to my old records and I think, ‚How did I ever get on the radio?‘

Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real achievement is liking what you see in the mirror every morning.

If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.

Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.

Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can’t expect an angel to look out.

Issues are never simple. One thing I’m proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.

Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.

Perhaps I can say that I am a bit astute, that I can adapt to circumstances, but it is also true that I am a bit naive. Yes, but the best summary, the one that comes more from the inside and I feel most true is this: I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

There are a lot of things I never did, because I believe in watching those true Hollywood stories and I see how easy it is to lose track of your life.

When I had to make a decision whether or not an activity was appropriate for the Sabbath, I simply asked myself, ‚What sign do I want to give to God?‘ That question made my choices about the Sabbath day crystal clear.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.