Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.

I’m not trying to follow a set of rules and stuff. I’m just living my life.

What you put into life is what you get out of it.

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

I can never be safe; I always try and go against the grain. As soon as I accomplish one thing, I just set a higher goal. That’s how I’ve gotten to where I am.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

I don’t know how to live good. I only know how to suffer.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

I’m chasing perfection.

Everyone I look up to is bringing me into the tech world. You’d be surprised by all the music people in it, invested in it.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

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.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

As a kid, I used to see how Sachin Tendulkar used to win matches under pressure for India in Sharjah or other places. So I was always keen to repeat the same in similar situations. I don’t take pressure on myself when I am in the middle. I love pressure, and I always believe that pressure makes you more focused.

Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.

You can’t hire someone to practice for you.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

Follow your honest convictions and be strong.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming.

It’s a philosophy of life. A practice. If you do this, something will change, what will change is that you will change, your life will change, and if you can change you, you can perhaps change the world.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.

Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.

Over the years I’ve learned how to lock myself up in a prison of hope, knowing that God has nothing but His best planned for me. He promised me things concerning my ministry and my life.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

Never find fault with the absent.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

The day you stop doing the small things is the day you think you’re above everybody else.

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.

I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn’t bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn’t have any brains. I didn’t know what I was doing there. That’s why I became an actor.

I have the Midas touch, in the way that when I hook up with a project, I feel, not speaking cocky or conceited, but there’s a confidence I have. I learned that from Muhammad Ali; I used to bodyguard him. He taught me about confidence. So when it comes to any job I work, I’m gonna do it good; I’m going to bring it over the top.

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

You don’t have to be like everybody else or do things like everybody else. God created you to be a unique individual, and He wants you to be free to be who He made you to be.

Self-worth comes from one thing – thinking that you are worthy.

I’ve learned not to look at reviews. Early on, I did. I was always curious.

Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.

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

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

When I was about thirteen, the library was going to get ‚Calculus for the Practical Man.‘ By this time I knew, from reading the encyclopedia, that calculus was an important and interesting subject, and I ought to learn it.

Even with my divorce and with everything, I don’t need money.

Think not that humility is weakness; it shall supply the marrow of strength to thy bones. Stoop and conquer; bow thyself and become invincible.

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.

Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun, and I think I’m sort of building up to doing something else quite soon.

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.

Sometimes I catch myself stooping, and whenever I am like that, I am sure something is not quite right.

I wasn’t that great a chef, and I don’t think I’m that great a writer.

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.

We all know we have a finite period of time. I just feel if I’m going to be alive, I want to be challenged – to be as immortal as possible. The path to that isn’t an easy way, but it’s a rewarding way.

I think beating myself up sometimes and knowing I am not happy when I do it makes me work harder to do a good job.

We have to continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality.

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

If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.