I don’t want to just revolve. I want to evolve. As a man, as a human, as a father, as a lover.

I spent most of the early years of my walk with God focused on what was wrong with me. Most of us probably do that, hoping to change ourselves.

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.

I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything – diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

The reason that I’m here at all is because of my relationship with my family and their encouragement of me to be a musician and to work hard. As long as I stay there in that space, I can do anything. That’s my truth.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

I give opinions, not advice.

Single life is so overrated.

Now that I’m a parent, I understand why my father was in a bad mood a lot.

What you have outside you counts less than what you have inside you.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

Is solace anywhere more comforting than that in the arms of a sister.

Sometimes you have to take two steps back to take ten forward.

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.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

No one can give you better advice than yourself.

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.

I never thought I’d have children; I never thought I’d be in love, I never thought I’d meet the right person. Having come from a broken home – you kind of accept that certain things feel like a fairy tale, and you just don’t look for them.

Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.

My goal is to entertain myself and others.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

I had my moments of being humiliated, and then I had moments of doing something humiliating. I’m glad I lived out both roles.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

I’ve never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

I haven’t been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will in the future.

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

If you change and adapt your persona, you are seen as inauthentic; if you stay the angry young man, you fade from attention or seem tiresome.

Thoughts are mental energy; they’re the currency that you have to attract what you desire. Learn to stop spending that currency on thoughts you don’t want.

You listen to Charlie Parker or John Coltrane before they found their voice, they sounded different. And when you listen to them after they found their voice on their instruments, they sound more confident and in control. Artists have that, too.

Now that I understand that I’m an addict, I definitely have compassion for my mother. I get it.

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

Every three months, I’ll say, ‚Honey, I think I should learn how to cook‘.

I always say the strength of democracy lies in criticism. If there is no criticism, that means there is no democracy. And if you want to grow, you must invite criticism. And I want to grow; I want to invite criticism.

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

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

I love hugging people. I still hug everybody in my meet-and-greet lines.

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

Let go of yesterday.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there’s less of you.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.

I love food.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

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

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee.