I don’t think that much about my relationship with my mother and what it did to me. I sometimes feel terrible regret about her, what her life must have been like. Often, when I’m enjoying something, I think of how meager her rewards were and how much courage, in a way, she needed to go on living.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

I always thought it was wrong for me to take credit for the work that I did. I don’t think that anymore.

Just try new things. Don’t be afraid. Step out of your comfort zones and soar, all right?

Oh! Most miserable wretch that I am! Why have I not learnt how to swim?

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

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

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America.

Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.

When I was married, I definitely went through a lying period.

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.

A tear dries quickly when it is shed for troubles of others.

It requires more courage to suffer than to die.

Don’t tell your problems to people: eighty percent don’t care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

I’m not critic-proof, and I still take it personally, but I take it less personally now.

Listen, I think that people want a president who is going to be interested in the things that keep them up at night, the things that are weighing on them, the things that are debilitating and can be addressed.

All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.

It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.

I guess I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone’s wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really.

Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.

I carry a small sheet of paper in my wallet that has written on it the names of people whose opinions of me matter. To be on that list, you have to love me for my strengths and struggles.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can’t expect an angel to look out.

You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.

The capability of negotiating… is something that means you not only have to understand fully what you believe and what your national interests are but in order to be a really good negotiator, you have to try to figure out what the other person on the other side of the table has in mind.

A man’s own judgment should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself.

People have me pinned as a shark or a predator in some way, and in no way am I that. I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. I want to defend people. I want to help people.

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.

You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, ‚I forgive. I’m finished with it.‘

Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.

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

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

When I see myself as an old woman, I just think about being happy. And hopefully, I’ll still be fly.

It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

You can either be a host to God, or a hostage to your ego. It’s your call.

I think, when you are growing up, you have to pull apart from what your mother wants or needs. You’ve got to go your own way, and that’s what I did.

There is a piece of me that likes to fondly imagine my maverick and rebellious nature. But, more accurately, I like to have a nice and cosy institution that I can rub up against a little bit.

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that’s happening to me, and some days I feel everyone’s waiting for me to mess up.

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.

Nobody knows me.

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

I’m not great at bedtime stories. Bedtime stories are supposed to put the kid to sleep. My kid gets riled up and then my wife has to come in and go, ‚All right! Get out of the room.‘

I really have no interest in myself.

A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore.

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water’s edge.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‚If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?‘ But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‚If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?‘

If you’re going to do something tonight that you’ll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late.

I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

Courage is a kind of salvation.

See things from the boy’s point of view.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

When I was a young man, Dirac was my hero. He made a breakthrough, a new method of doing physics. He had the courage to simply guess at the form of an equation, the equation we now call the Dirac equation, and to try to interpret it afterwards.

One man with courage is a majority.

When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see persons of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.