For me, there is no such thing as a negative experience.

It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist.

When you realize who you live for, and who’s important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I’m gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it – and I lived it for me.

I’ve always kinda been a little outcast myself, a little oddball, doin‘ my thing, my own way. And it’s been hard for me to, to be accepted, certainly in the early years of my life.

My one big regret is that I didn’t play on for ten more years.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Thoughts are fine when you don’t confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.

I just have always felt that people don’t change, circumstances change.

I always entertain the notion that I’m wrong, or that I’ll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

I’ve never been one to sit back and go, ‚I’d better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don’t want to lose them.‘

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we’re able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.

I’m crazy and I don’t pretend to be anything else.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

I’ve arrived at the place if I’m not taking a career risk, I’m not happy. If I’m scared, then I know I’m being challenged.

I’ve done some analysis of the biblical stories as part of my psychological work. I knew that I had more to do, and every time I’ve done it, it’s been extremely valuable. It makes me a better teacher because I have a richer understanding of cultural history.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

I grew up in an environment where being polite was taken as a weakness. So I just fought everybody.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

Most people already know what they’re doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.

If your inner life is not producing what you would like on the outside, don’t be discouraged… just be willing to change.

I will not be concerned at other men’s not knowing me; I will be concerned at my own want of ability.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

You can’t go backward in life.

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.

We forge the chains we wear in life.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

God is more interested in your future and your relationships than you are.

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

I love my friends and my past, and it’s made me who I am.

When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.

These are the soul’s changes. I don’t believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.

I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me.

Even if you have a terminal disease, you don’t have to sit down and mope. Enjoy life and challenge the illness that you have.

I was at a New Year’s Eve party, and someone asked me how was my year, and I said, ‚I honestly think 2011 was the best year of my entire life,‘ and I actually meant it.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

People who don’t know the true character of God – who don’t believe He is merciful, gracious and slow to anger – can never have a close, personal, intimate relationship with Him.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

I will praise any man that will praise me.

I implore you to see the universe as a warm and supportive one because you’ll look for evidence to support this view. When you anticipate that the universe is friendly, you see friendly people. You look for circumstances to work in your favor. You anticipate good fortune flowing into your life.

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.

I don’t have the best track record with quotes.

Our necessities never equal our wants.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

I’m aware that, whatever the circumstances, there will always be speculation about me.

I always was that person who was hard on myself and challenged myself no matter what I was doing, whether it was passing third grade or playing basketball.

The spirit is there in every boy; it has to be discovered and brought to light.

If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

I don’t have many sad days.

I had never been in charge of anything. I’d always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I’d never been in charge of an organization.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

My whole life is a theater piece.

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.