Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

You gotta keep trying to find your niche and trying to fit into whatever slot that’s left for you or to make one of your own.

My moms always told me, ‚How long you gonna play the victim?‘ I can say I’m mad and I hate everything, but nothing really changes until I change myself.

For me, it’s about the way I carry myself and the way I treat other people. My relationship and how I feel about God and what He does for me, is something deeply personal. It’s where I came from, my family, I was brought up in a religious household and that’s very important to me.

I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.

One of the things that we’re trying to do with Creative Labs and all our experiences is explore things that aren’t all tied to Facebook identity. Some things will be, but not everything will have to be, because there are some sets of experiences that are just better with other identities.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

At the end of the day, I understand that life has road blocks, and life is like school – you’ll be tested; we gotta pass it.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

The most challenging project I’ve ever done, I think, is every single thing I’ve ever tried to do. It’s never easy.

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!

The closest I ever came to getting married was just before I started singing. In fact, my first record saved my neck.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

I love all kinds of insects, and I’ve heard Australia has some really interesting bugs.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

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.

However happy people say they are, nobody is satisfied: we always have to be with the prettiest woman, buy a bigger house, change cars, desire what we do not have.

Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, ‚The Intoxication of Life,‘ ‚The Purpose of Life,‘ ‚The Real Cause of Man’s Distress,‘ ‚The Journey to the Goal in Life,‘ and, one of my favorites, ‚The Heart of Man.‘ They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.

Sadly, the truth is, there aren’t many people who can be put in high positions who won’t start thinking highly of themselves.

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?

Nothing on ‚Relapse‘ and very little on ‚Recovery‘ was produced by me.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.

Everyone assumes I practise all of my own laws but I don’t. I think anybody who did would be a horrible ugly person to be around.

I believe enlightenment or revelation comes in daily life. I look for joy, the peace of action. You need action. I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

Just because something didn’t work out your way, or somebody disappointed you, that does not change who you are.

Partition is bad. But whatever is past is past. We have only to look to the future.

Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.

The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it’s egotism.

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

I’m not a complete psychopath. Am I partially? Sure. I’ll accept that. But I’m not a complete psychopath.

Over the years I’ve learned how to lock myself up in a prison of hope, knowing that God has nothing but His best planned for me. He promised me things concerning my ministry and my life.

The self is hateful.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

As for my own views, they’ve of course evolved over the years. This conception of ‚renouncing beliefs‘ is very odd, as if we’re in some kind of religious cult. I ‚renounce beliefs‘ practically every time I think about the topics or find out what someone else is thinking.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

It is important to remember yourself.

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

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

You cannot let where you are today cause you to get stuck. I’m going to be my best right now. That’s what faith is all about.

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

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

To live is to find out for yourself what is true, and you can do this only when there is freedom, when there is continuous revolution inwardly, within yourself.

When I was about thirteen, the library was going to get ‚Calculus for the Practical Man.‘ By this time I knew, from reading the encyclopedia, that calculus was an important and interesting subject, and I ought to learn it.

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.

To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?

Libraries raised me.

I think that we have opportunities all around us – sometimes we just don’t recognize them.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.