God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

The hardest thing for – not only an artist but for anybody to do is look themselves in the mirror and acknowledge, you know, their own flaws and fears and imperfections and put them out there in the open for people to relate to it.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

It’s dangerous to read the Internet about yourself when you’re me. Or when you’re anyone in the public eye.

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

The people in my songs are all me.

I’ve been called a recluse. There’s definitely truth in that. I like to spend time alone.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

I do have motivation. A lot of motivation.

I hated to be treated as a child. I thought it was the worst situation.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.

You have to just make the choices you make in life. I made the choices I made because I believed they were right for me.

I am a big believer in education, because when I grew up in Austria – when I grew up in Austria I had a great education. I had great teachers.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.

It’s more interesting for me to figure out how to be superior in areas where I’m naive, where I’m a novice.

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

If you carefully consider what you want to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success.

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don’t want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It’s a natural process.

Why am I a star? It can’t be because of looks.

I’m really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.

Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.

I’ve learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it.

The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself.

You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.

The ‚soul‘ is one of the words you can use to talk about your innermost being, the essence of who you are.

Find people who will make you better.

My thing is this; if I’m sick enough to think it, then I’m sick enough to say it.

There’s a gap between what I want to do, what I do on camera, and what gets edited. Right? So the goal is to try and close the gaps. What’s the biggest compliment is if I read a review and it’s exactly what I wrote down in my diary before ever filming it. That’s really cool. That’s the biggest signifier of closing the gaps.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops.

If I was to go to sleep before midnight, I would feel weird about myself, like I wasted a day. My most productive hours are between midnight and five.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

I think life is a matter of choices and that wherever we are, good or bad, is because of choices we make.

God didn’t make me to make movies, flex muscles, buy gold. What you love the most becomes your God… If I never make another dollar, my life is complete.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

The book you don’t read won’t help.

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.

Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real achievement is liking what you see in the mirror every morning.

I don’t mind people hating me, because it pushes me.

When I was younger, I was testing myself and questioning everything, but now it’s less about that and more about these are the years of my life with my family.

If an individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.

Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn’t say I lived in a ghetto; I’d say I lived in the ‚hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

I don’t think I will ever be content. I am somebody who is always hungry.

When I was a kid, I had a tendency to criticize. But when I did, my mum would whisk me off to the bathroom to stand in front of a mirror. Ten minutes, never less. To think about how criticism is a poor reflection on the one who criticizes.

I have survivor’s curiosity, I guess.

Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

The true identity theft is not financial. It’s not in cyberspace. It’s spiritual. It’s been taken.