Even paranoids have real enemies.

Man’s enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

If a man be gloomy let him keep to himself. No one has the right to go croaking about society, or what is worse, looking as if he stifled grief.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

The more in harmony with yourself you are, the more joyful you are and the more faithful you are. Faith is not to disconnect you from reality – it connects you to reality.

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

Children, I mean, think of your own childhood, how important the bedtime story was. How important these imaginary experiences were for you. They helped shape reality, and I think human beings wouldn’t be human without narrative fiction.

As a human being, anger is a part of our mind. Irritation also part of our mind. But you can do – anger come, go. Never keep in your sort of – your inner world, then create a lot of suspicion, a lot of distrust, a lot of negative things, more worry.

Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

If you know how to worry, you know how to meditate. It means to think of something over and over.

I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point.

For me, there have been times when an action movie, even a ‚Tomb Raider,‘ has helped me get out of myself and be physical again. It’s like therapy.

I think the most important thing is to keep active and to hope that your mind stays active.

I didn’t get depressed, I don’t get depressed.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

If you’re doing a biography, you try to stay as accurate as possible to reality. But you really don’t know what was going on in the person’s mind. You just know what was going on in the minds of people around him.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.

Don’t create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.

I have a slight bit of OCD, I think. I’m not walking around flipping light switches. But when I say I’m going to do something, I have to do it.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

Love is a serious mental disease.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.

It seems like we wake up and it’s a race until you get to bed. It gets to you after a while and you think, ‚What the hell am I doing?‘

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

I don’t have many sad days.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Society has always to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.

The wild Indian power of escaping observation, even where there is little or no cover to hide in, was probably slowly acquired in hard hunting and fighting lessons while trying to approach game, take enemies by surprise, or get safely away when compelled to retreat.

We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.

Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.

When you begin to worry, go find something to do. Get busy being a blessing to someone; do something fruitful. Talking about your problem or sitting alone, thinking about it, does no good; it serves only to make you miserable. Above all else, remember that worrying is totally useless. Worrying will not solve your problem.

It is important to remember yourself.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

Exposure from a young age to the realities of the world is a super-big thing.

I’ve had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.

A great hallmark of mental wellness is the ability to be in the present moment, fully and with no thoughts of being elsewhere.

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can’t get it out, I start feeling bad about myself – a lot of self-loathing.

As a shame researcher, I know that the very best thing to do in the midst of a shame attack is totally counterintuitive: Practice courage and reach out!

Most men are within a finger’s breadth of being mad.

The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a sentence. I had anxiety attacks. Partly it was a way of personifying the situation because I couldn’t breathe. I was surrounded by people and by duties. I was a housewife and the children’s mother, and I was judged on how I performed those roles.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairytale artist.

Meditation is difficult for many people because their thoughts are always on some distant object or place. One form of meditation is to label the thought as it appears and then choose to let it go.

It is far more difficult to murder a phantom than a reality.

One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.