If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

My music seems to have a bigger mission than I have, which is very soothing but also very strange because people see more in me than I see, which can be terrifying.

I was a thug.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

It’s dangerous to read the Internet about yourself when you’re me. Or when you’re anyone in the public eye.

Let us ask ourselves, ‚What kind of people do we think we are?‘ And let us answer, ‚Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.‘

I like definitive things.

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

I’ve always felt that if I examine myself too much, I’ll find out what I know and don’t know, and I’ll burst the bubble. I’ve gotten so lucky relying on my animal instincts, I’d rather keep a little bit of the animal alive.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

Did you know there’s a difference between being busy and being fruitful? Did you ever stop to think that just being busy – running around in circles all day but not accomplishing anything – is the same as wasting your time? It’s frustrating to expend so much energy and time and not have any fruit from your effort!

I don’t believe in colleges and universities.

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.

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.

Night brings our troubles to the light, rather than banishes them.

It’s like a jar of salad dressing sitting on a shelf… most of the seasoning settles to the bottom of the bottle. But when you shake that bottle up, all the ingredients mix together and then the dressing can add flavor to a salad. In the same way, we can stir ourselves up and regain the reverence, respect and awe we once had for the Lord.

Do you know the only value life has is what life puts on itself?

We don’t need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

I can be a cruel person.

We all self-conscious. I’m just the first to admit it.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

‚Victory‘ is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It’s just about reaching a place in myself.

Men take only their needs into consideration – never their abilities.

Don’t wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.

What you are comes to you.

One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

Never explain – your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

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.

A lot of times, I run a thought experiment: ‚If I were not at Facebook, what would I be doing to make the world more open?‘

I don’t look at my old work. I mean, they made nice books; the books were made without me, the one from last year and the one from this year. I – personally, I’m not interested in my own past. I’m only interested in today – perhaps tomorrow.

For me, one of the toughest things about Valentine’s Day is that it gets geared up as the day to profess your love. See, T-E-S-T – that’s a bad word that doesn’t go with L-O-V-E.

There are some people who need to wear a label round their necks to show that they are Christians at all, or else we might mistake them for sinners, their actions are so like those of the ungodly.

You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.

Don’t compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

Jesus isn’t lettin‘ you off the hook. The Scriptures don’t let you off the hook so easily… When people say, you know, ‚Good teacher‘, ‚Prophet‘, ‚Really nice guy‘ … this is not how Jesus thought of Himself.

I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.

When it comes to our everyday habits, it’s important to ask: ‚Am I putting God first?‘

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write.

Feels good to try, but playing a father, I’m getting a little older. I see now that I’m taking it more serious and I do want that lifestyle.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.

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

It’s one thing to be religious, but it’s another thing to make religion your policy.

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.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

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

I am God’s vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.

I will be unhappy if I know I have not accomplished something I should have done that was possible.

I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.

There are phases in life which surface at times, and it makes you understand that despite you working hard, everything what you are doing is probably not enough. That’s when you need to look around, and beyond.