A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid.

Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

I tend to overthink things. I’m not the guy who screams ‚This is a world smash!‘ when I finish a song.

Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

Look at the way celebrities and politicians are using Facebook already. When Ashton Kutcher posts a video, he gets hundreds of pieces of feedback. Maybe he doesn’t have time to read them all or respond to them all, but he’s getting good feedback and getting a good sense of how people are thinking about that and maybe can respond to some of it.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.

Being a full human being is difficult, frightening, and problematical.

I think our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted. It means engaging with the world from a place of vulnerability and worthiness.

I owe my solitude to other people.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker.

No one is laughable who laughs at himself.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

I get naturally uncomfortable when I’m put under a magnifying glass.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

My fans saw me get engaged, saw me make that woman my wife, me having kids, me divorcing, me talking about divorce before the divorce, me talking about my kids‘ reaction to that divorce.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent.

I’m not good at talking about myself.

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves – and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.

The first quality that is needed is audacity.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.

Go to you bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.

I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.

Who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl?

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

I don’t follow all the 48 laws. Like, I’ve never crushed anyone totally.

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!