A celebrated people lose dignity upon a closer view.

I don’t want people to think of me as sexy.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

People often think I’m a faker, but I’m usually honest, in a certain way – in such a way that often nobody believes me!

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

The beautiful seems right by force of beauty, and the feeble wrong because of weakness.

Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.

I’m easy to look like, so there are lots and lots of Dolly look-alikes.

The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

Every man’s reputation proceeds from those of his own household.

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.

I’m a singer, not a politician, and I think you don’t want the two to get confused. It’s not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months.

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

I’m not really concerned with portraying this tough warrior – I mean, that’s part of my job and I take that very seriously. But I don’t have anything to hide, and I’m not concerned with what people think.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

All gamblers lose regularly, but they rarely discuss it in public. Losing is bad for the image, dude. Nobody buys Hot Tips from Losers. Remember that.

The thing about delirium is you think it’s great, but it actually isn’t.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia – to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.

It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.

I think the perception of peace is what distracts most people from really having it.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

I heard that when Christina Aguilera went back to her prom, people, like, booed her. I can’t imagine going through that. If you know that’s going to happen, why put yourself in that situation? I’d rather play for 20,000 screaming people, you know?

Whoever renders service to many puts himself in line for greatness – great wealth, great return, great satisfaction, great reputation, and great joy.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

I’ve been invited to do ‚Dancing With the Stars‘ three times, but Lifetime said no.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.

I don’t have this feeling that 70 is really old.

Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.

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

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

Reality is a sliding door.

Greece needs to work on a cleaner image. It’s a big problem, as they have this reputation of being so corrupt.

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.

There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

Getting recognized is insane. It just blows my mind. Like, someone who you don’t know at all can just be like, ‚Oh my God – are you Billie?‘

Words are more powerful than some noises. Noises won’t last long. Lyrics are so important, and people don’t realise that.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.