From my close observation of writers… they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

I don’t know if she should worry too much, I mean some of our greatest writers have had movies made of their books, lots of Hemingway novels were turned into movies, it doesn’t hurt the book.

It’s important that we invest in America – literally. The terrorists wanted to destroy our economy, and we can’t let our system fall apart. We also have to invest in one another.

As you think, so shall you become.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

The worst thing that happens to you may be the best thing for you if you don’t let it get the best of you.

When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl.

If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I’d still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up.

Well, I’m in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.

Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.

I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Well, I screwed it up real good, didn’t I?

Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

Mentally, the only players who survive in the pros are the ones able to manage all their responsibilities. Everybody struggles in different ways.

Sometimes when you make a film you can go away for three months and then come back and live your life. But this struck a much deeper chord. I don’t have the ability yet to speak about it in an objective.

I don’t like looking back. I’m always constantly looking forward. I’m not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk. I’m too busy looking for the next cow.

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

People in Latin America… love America from afar and emulate America in some ways but also hate a lot of things that America does to them.

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

I never read one hateful thing said about me by some 12 year old. So I got to live an actual life. And I’ve kept that mentality. Just because there’s a hurricane going on around you doesn’t mean you have to open the window and look at it.

I really didn’t consider myself happy or unhappy.

I come from – I came from Wales, and it’s a strong, butch society. We were in the war and all that. People didn’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves. You had to get on with it. So my credo is get on with it. I don’t waste time being soft. I’m not cold, but I don’t like being, wasting my time with – life’s too short.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

We’re going to be OK because of the American people. They have more grit, determination and courage than you can imagine.

A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I’m learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, ‚I can’t go to Kmart. I can’t take my kids to the haunted house.‘

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

The sun doesn’t always shine in West Virginia, but the people do.

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

When things are going bad, there’s going to be some good that’s going to come from it.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

Sometimes God will deliver you from the fire, and other times God will make you fireproof.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

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

Change is always tough. Even for those who see themselves as agents of change, the process of starting a new thing can cause times of disorientation, uncertainty and insecurity.

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

In crises the most daring course is often safest.

Nothing’s ever easy as long as you go on living.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.

No rapper in the world from Jay-Z to Tupac to Biggie has 100 percent love on everything they do.

America is just downright mean.

When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.

Never take anything for granted.

My biggest error? Something that is to happen yet.

Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

The only way you gain mental toughness is to do things you’re not happy doing. If you continue doing things that you’re satisfied and make you happy, you’re not getting stronger. You’re staying where you’re at. Either you’re getting better, or you’re getting worse. You’re not staying the same.