For my career, I wouldn’t go racing if I didn’t enjoy it. I still need to have my say, and not just get put with a team and get told to deal with it.

I’m more than comfortable just sitting back and scoring 21, 22 points or whatever and getting 10, 11 assists whatever the case might be. More than comfortable with that. It’s just a matter of the pieces that you have around you and what you can do to elevate everybody else.

Wise kings generally have wise counselors; and he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one.

I live halfway between reality and theater at all times. And I was born this way.

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.

I enjoy wearing pins, and nobody tells me to do it.

Sometimes I wonder why I’m a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I’m a successful writer.

When I get logical, and I don’t trust my instincts – that’s when I get in trouble.

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.

Whatever position I occupied, it was the result of colleagues – of my comrades in the movement – who had decided in their wisdom to use me for the purpose of focusing the attention of the country and the international community on me.

When you have that respect from your teammates, it makes it a lot more comfortable.

I can’t deny that label-support gave me a leg up – though not every successful artist needs it.

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury.

I knew when my career was over. In 1965 my baseball card came out with no picture.

If the critics are right that I’ve made all my decisions based on polls, then I must not be very good at reading them.

Do I wear a helmet? Ugh. I do when I’m riding through a precarious part of town, meaning Midtown traffic. But when I’m riding on secure protected lanes or on the paths that run along the Hudson or through Central Park – no, I don’t wear the dreaded helmet then.

In my line of work, the enemy gets a vote.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

I’ve been a mogul and executive since the beginning of my career. People are just born with that skill.

I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.

A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.

The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

My parents pretty much realized that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really.

Decisiveness is a characteristic of high-performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.

I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

Hair is about when you’re younger. I am my hair.

A lot of people have said I’d have probably done better in my career if I hadn’t looked so cheap and gaudy. But I dress to be comfortable for me, and you shouldn’t be blamed because you want to look pretty.

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.

I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.

I felt like, for so many years – and I still even feel it – as a girl, you can’t really expect to go on stage and dress like a boy and jump around and scream with the audience and mosh and stuff, and every time that happens, I feel really proud.

I don’t write policy for my government.

When should a college athlete turn pro? Not until he has earned all he can in college as an amateur.

I love making music. That’s what I love to do. So I don’t feel like there’s any need to take a break unless I want to.

If you’re a quarterback, you want everything on your shoulders. You want to be the one to make the decisions.

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you’re making a mistake but let you go on with it, that’s when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

The best workers, like the happiest livers, look upon their work as a kind of game: the harder they play the more enjoyable it becomes.

I want the world to see my body.

When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.

Talk low, talk slow and don’t say too much.

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.

A leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.

Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.

It’s extremely difficult to get these jobs because you can’t get a job on a ship unless you have seaman’s paper’s, and you can’t get seaman’s papers unless you have a job on a ship. There had to be a way to break through the circle, and he was the one who arranged it for me.

Never marry someone in hope that they’ll change later.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

The jury consist of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.

If the team keeps changing then everything has to keep changing.

I definitely connected to the fact that life gets out of control and you end up doing things and wishing you were doing other things instead.

When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

I’m not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.

Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.

I’m not much of a math and science guy. I spent most of my time in school daydreaming and managed to turn it into a living.