Personally, I like reading adventures which really have happened to people, because they show what kind of things might happen to oneself, and they teach one how to ‚Be Prepared‘ to meet them.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that.

My father wasn’t perfect. He had a temper. I took some of that. He would snap, but the older he got, he started calming down. He learned about life, but the thing that he taught my whole family was that family was the most important thing and, no matter what, if a family member needs you, you go and help them out; you get there.

Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

I try to sprinkle a little gems and jewels in the music that people could use in their own life.

In real life, I’m a really smiley person. I smile when I talk and I laugh.

God has his plans and his reasons. Sometimes we are supposed to go through things so that we learn lessons.

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

I’m not saying that love always takes you to heaven. Your life can become a nightmare. But that said, it is worth taking the risk.

In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life – or at least the way life should be.

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

We cannot learn men from books.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.

It takes no more time to see the good side of life than it takes to see the bad.

To hold a man down, you have to stay down with him.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses will be all the stronger for working together and sharing the load.

If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.

Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.

When you play sports like tennis, you’re alone, and that’s a good school for life, but it’s also a good school for life to bring your best and make those around you better, too – helping others in difficult moments.

Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only to cast it down.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

Lost time is never found again.

‚Suffering should not make us bitter people,‘ my mother once said, ‚it should make us better comforters.‘ Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they’ll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

College isn’t in everyone’s hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn’t mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.

I didn’t know any gay people in my childhood.

Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?

I want to thank God, obviously for the health, for the talent He’s given me, for my family who supports me, for the things that basketball’s taught me on and off the court. For the people that I’ve been able to meet through the game of basketball.

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

The reward of suffering is experience.

When I reached 80, my world turned upside down physically. I’ve had a lot of physical problems.

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.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.

The last suit that you wear, you don’t need any pockets.

I’d done a lot of research in Hollywood and in academia. I love research and so I wanted to kind of ground the book in history, in things that I read that were universal and timeless and then kind of let my own experiences sort of filter through all of this history.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

Sooner or later we’re all someone’s dog.

As I grow up, the lessons I learn in love and relationships and how we treat each other are hopefully maturing – hopefully.

Whether I’m running on the beach without my shirt or whether I’m going out with my kids or going to church or going out to dinner – I don’t choose to insulate myself in engaging in real life. Hence, the public kind of almost knows me as much through my real life that they see through the rag mags.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

I don’t blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout. I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they’ll realize there’s more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously.

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.