Face your fears and doubts, and new worlds will open to you.

Does anybody really think that they didn’t get what they had because they didn’t have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment?

Everyone goes through adversity in life, but what matters is how you learn from it.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.

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

I have met 18 million youth, and each wants to be unique.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

I know this sounds strange, but as a kid, I was really shy. Painfully shy. The turning point was freshman year, when I was the biggest geek alive. No one, I mean no one, even talked to me.

Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.

I’ve done some analysis of the biblical stories as part of my psychological work. I knew that I had more to do, and every time I’ve done it, it’s been extremely valuable. It makes me a better teacher because I have a richer understanding of cultural history.

Don’t ever forget two things I’m going to tell you. One, don’t believe everything that’s written about you. Two, don’t pick up too many checks.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything – diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.

What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats.

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

If you look at my life, generally, I’ve been put in situations which were difficult and which I conquered.

Knowledge cultivates your seeds and does not sow in your seeds.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I’m still fanatical, but now I’m a little less fanatical.

I think there is a lot made out of age, and what age you feel.

I got teased my entire school life. What they were picking on I don’t even understand.

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

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

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.

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

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

I think that when you’re making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second.

My overall look on things is a lot more mature than it used to be.

Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.

I’ve done many ads because that’s my new career. It’s an inspiring extension for my mind.

I don’t think I’m an unlucky person.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye, and you will be drawn toward it.

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

I’m a big believer in doing things that make you uncomfortable. So, we live in a world where we want to be as comfortable as we can. And we wonder why we have no growth. We wonder why – when the smallest thing in our life gets difficult – we wonder why we cower and we run away.

I admire people who destroy themselves.

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

I had nothing growing up, but I always wanted to be ‚sexy,‘ even before I knew what the word was.

The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom.

The Bible tells us to be perfect. This is likely a scary thought for many people. It used to scare me. I didn’t think I could ever get there, no matter how hard I tried.

A man must now swallow more belief than he can digest.

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

So many people have this idea: I want to achieve something great or be somebody great. And they neglect the step that leads to greatness. They don’t honor this step at this moment because they have this idea of some future moment where they are going to be great.

A woman has the age she deserves.

I think it’s a very good thing to leave your country and look at it from afar.

No one can give you better advice than yourself.

If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work towards getting it.

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‚Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.‘

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

If you’re not producing as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.