Get busy living, or get busy dying.

I’ve had two cancer bouts in my years on the Court, and the first one, Justice O’Connor told me, ‚Now, you do the chemotherapy on Friday because you’ll get over it during the weekend and you can be back in court on Monday.‘

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.

My children came out as individuals in their own right. They were not my products. They had their own characters and were very strong-minded. I gave them a lot of freedom when they were still very young. The one thing they got from me is morals. They would never betray anyone. They are really good people.

Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation.

I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people’s minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

Whatever you want to do, do with full passion and work really hard towards it. Don’t look anywhere else. There will be a few distractions, but if you can be true to yourself, you will be successful for sure.

The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you’ll make one.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

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.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

Deficiency motivation doesn’t work. It will lead to a life-long pursuit of try to fix me. Learn to appreciate what you have and where and who you are.

When one door is closed, don’t you know, another is open.

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

The shortest answer is doing the thing.

People like to blame others. I think a person should just look at their own situation, look around them, find out what they wish to do, and seek and go and do that. And that’s it.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

I never dreamt, in my dream, I’m Dalai Lama.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.

I think that I’m perfect.

I’m gonna be making records anyway, even if I had to sell ‚em out of the trunk of my car. I’m that kind of musician and singer.

Invest three percent of your income in yourself (self-development) in order to guarantee your future.

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.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

Don’t wait to be successful at some future point. Have a successful relationship with the present moment and be fully present in whatever you are doing. That is success.

So much of what we do every single day is the result of habits that we have formed over time.

I was impressed with what someone like Karl Lagerfeld built and did and the house that he made, but there was never really a female figure I wanted to emulate.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

Check your ego at the door. The ego can be the great success inhibitor. It can kill opportunities, and it can kill success.

Mine is better than ours.

When you face a ‚performance‘ that might provoke the ‚I’m scared‘ response, choose love and approach your opportunity as a chance to dance with God. It’s more fun than ‚Dancing with the Stars!‘

Never was anything great achieved without danger.

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

Never mistake motion for action.

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can’t knock it.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

Since I was old enough to understand what a songwriter/producer is, I’ve had a curiosity about how Max Martin creates what he creates. I wanted to see that happen. I wanted to be there. I wanted to learn from him.

Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.

It is natural to want to have a future.

To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I’m working on the foundation.

Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts; in a uniform manner.

There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.

I find a lot of inspiration through visuals. When I was 12, I saw Aurora’s ‚Runaway‘ music video. Something inside me clicked, like, ‚That is what I want to do, no matter whether it goes anywhere or not.‘

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.

The mind is everything. What you think you become.

My favorite literary heroine is Jo March. It is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo, who had a hot temper and a burning ambition to be a writer.

The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion.