A lot of us grow up and we grow out of the literal interpretation that we get when we’re children, but we bear the scars all our life. Whether they’re scars of beauty or scars of ugliness, it’s pretty much in the eye of the beholder.

Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

What you see, but can’t see over is as good as infinite.

Critics only make you stronger. You have to look at what they are saying as feedback. Sometimes the feedback helps, and other times, it’s just noise that can be a distraction.

For me, already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you’d would wake up times and hope that the next day you’d be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home.

However my parents – both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

Green Eggs and Ham was the story of my life. I wouldn’t eat a thing when I was a kid, but Dr. Seuss inspired me to try cauliflower!

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same time.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

From childhood on, I did sit in the courtroom watching my father argue cases and talk to juries.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

I don’t like perfumes that are too strong or sweet. I like a fragrance that is earthy and sensual and can be worn at any time.

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

I’m definitely gaining new fans, and that’s the key of any success… gain more love.

From my childhood I had been intended for the clergy. This prospect hung like a dark cloud on my mind.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

Say not, ‚I have found the truth,‘ but rather, ‚I have found a truth.‘

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

I’m seeing the world partially through the eyes of a kid. Not all the time. There’s no black and white to it. But sometimes I’m seeing it like I’m 4.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

My mom is American, so I was raised in her household in my formative years.

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

I didn’t die young. So I am very lucky. There are other artists and people that didn’t survive certain things… people can imagine that I did the most dangerous, and I did the worst… for many reasons, I shouldn’t be here.

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

History is written by the victors.

I think all women go through periods where we hate this about ourselves, we don’t like that. It’s great to get to a place where you dismiss anything you’re worried about. I find flaws attractive. I find scars attractive.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

Physical comforts cannot subdue mental suffering, and if we look closely, we can see that those who have many possessions are not necessarily happy. In fact, being wealthy often brings even more anxiety.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

I was in a terrible mess in my childhood.

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

Nothing is further than earth from heaven, and nothing is nearer than heaven to earth.

No matter how beautiful a woman might be, you’re always threatened by certain… You’re always threatened by other women, period.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.