Even though I was very shy, I found I could get onstage if I had a new identity.

I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

I know I will never be happy, but I know I can be gay!

When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.

Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

I don’t want followers.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end… I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.

When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see persons of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.

However happy people say they are, nobody is satisfied: we always have to be with the prettiest woman, buy a bigger house, change cars, desire what we do not have.

You can’t go backward in life.

Thirty was so strange for me. I’ve really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.

She never envisioned a legal career for me, but she did think it was very important that I be able to support myself, and I think she would be pleased to see what has become of me.

I went through a period when I felt my film characters were having more fun than I was. It might partly explain why I ended up tattooed or doing certain extreme things in my life.

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

A lot of times, people feel that if they forgive the person who hurt them, then they will continue to take advantage of them or not take responsibility for what they did wrong.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

I’m totally myself.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

Your most important work is always ahead of you, never behind you.

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

A shady business never yields a sunny life.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

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.

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

You know, most people really don’t know me.

When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness, is a birthright and not something you have to earn, anything is possible.

Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.

It is really very important while you are young to live in an environment in which there is no fear. Most of us, as we grow older, become frightened; we are afraid of living, afraid of losing a job, afraid of tradition, afraid of what the neighbours, or what the wife or husband would say, afraid of death.

One of the things I did when I discovered this huge importance of being vulnerable is very happily moved away from the shame research, because that’s such a downer, and people hate that topic. It’s not that vulnerability is the upside, but it’s better than shame, I guess.

I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.

Conflict cannot survive without your participation.

I’m never going to be fast, and nobody will ever mistake me for being fast.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

We cannot learn men from books.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

I want to challenge you today to get out of your comfort zone. You have so much incredible potential on the inside. God has put gifts and talents in you that you probably don’t know anything about.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

If you look at my life, generally, I’ve been put in situations which were difficult and which I conquered.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

Responsibility, I believe, accrues through privilege.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

I stopped doing drugs when I was 20. I was finished with drugs before Nirvana even started.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.

By taking responsibility for how you choose to respond to anything or anyone, you’re aligning yourself with the beautiful dance of life.

The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

Why don’t you start believing that no matter what you have or haven’t done, that your best days are still out in front of you.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.