I’m a super-duper over-analyzer. You mix that with self-doubt and pressure, and that’s never healthy.

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.

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

There’s a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I’m affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn’t want to leave. He likes it very much.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‚yours,‘ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

Depression runs in my family on both sides, and I have to be wary.

Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.

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

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.

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.

When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.

There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

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

Meditation is a great way to keep my body well-centered while juggling shooting schedules and recording sessions.

I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.

I was sure I’d set the world on fire, and it was hard for a young feller like me to realize the truth – that I hadn’t set the world on fire, and I was totally unprepared to handle the consequences if ‚The Big Trail‘ had been a success and launched me as a star.

I realized, ‚Yo, I can’t do anything in moderation. I don’t know how.‘

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

There was my name up in lights. I said, ‚God, somebody’s made a mistake.‘ But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, ‚Remember, you’re not a star.‘ Yet there it was up in lights.

A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.

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

If a man be gloomy let him keep to himself. No one has the right to go croaking about society, or what is worse, looking as if he stifled grief.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Jiu Jitsu is a great workout both mentally and physically. You want to be strong for it and flexible for it.

I think beating myself up sometimes and knowing I am not happy when I do it makes me work harder to do a good job.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.

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?

What I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever – I rap about it.

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

I think I’ve developed, as many people do, this sense of, ‚Don’t say the wrong thing, or else people will point at you and laugh.‘

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me. Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that, everyone’s had enough of me to last a month.

Paranoia is just another word for ignorance.

If you know how to worry, you know how to meditate. It means to think of something over and over.

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what’s going to happen in my life.

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.

For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?

It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

There’s a lot of pressure putting an album out all over the world and hoping people everywhere like it.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

It definitely has learning a lesson about the way you’re living your life. I wouldn’t compare our movie to that, but it has a structure where it’s about a man who doesn’t appreciate all that he has and finds out at the end that life has been great and he has to enjoy that.

Everybody has done something that we wish we didn’t say or do and wish we could take it back.

It’s hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

I even found it difficult to watch myself playing on TV because I couldn’t identify with the person on the screen. I couldn’t get to grips with it. It was as if it was all happening to someone else.

I talk to myself all the time. Just make sure you answer.

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

I was so ashamed of who I was.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.