If you don’t live your life, then who will?

Time stays, we go.

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

I believe that of all the things I have done, exciting though many of them have been, there’s no doubt in my mind that the most worthwhile have been the establishing of schools and hospitals, and the rebuilding of monasteries in the mountains.

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

Sometimes in the past when I played something might make me lose focus, or I would go home after a game where I thought I could have played better and I would let it hang over my head for a long time when it shouldn’t.

Our life is made by the death of others.

Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

For me, it’s enough that I have the first and last word.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!

It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.

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.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

How do I confront aging? With a wonder and a terror. Yeah, I’ll say that. Wonder and terror.

When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways – either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength. Thanks to the teachings of Buddha, I have been able to take this second way.

Freedom lies in being bold.

Ego is only fine when it is working for your motivation.

For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.

Life is about growing and improving and getting better.

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

We are never defeated unless we give up on God.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‚Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.‘

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses – behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.

I feel like this: Whatever is in your path and in your heart, you need to do.

Only you can control your future.

Never find fault with the absent.

Doubt in my tradition is something that is very helpful. Because of doubt, you can thirst more and you will get a higher kind of proof.

I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. I’m really confused now.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

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.

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

I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

I am not the humblest person in the world. I admit that.

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

It’s absolutely normal that different human beings want to go different ways.

My ‚fear‘ is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

If you like it you should enjoy it! Moderation in everything. If there’s things you really love, you should enjoy. You get one life, so you should enjoy it.

There are a lot of good women in New York.

If you want to shine like a sun, first burn like a sun.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

Life begins on the other side of despair.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.