I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer – it just happened.

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.

Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.

I have so much in my life. I want to be of value to the world.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

I always tell young girls, surround yourself with goodness. I learned early on how to get the haters out of my life.

Never take anything for granted.

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.

When it comes to everybody else’s thing and their lane and their timing, I’m never doing anything intentional to, like, come after somebody. That will always be my biggest mistake or anybody’s biggest mistake if that’s their intention.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

I’ve always done whatever I want and always been exactly who I am.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

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.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

Get mad, then get over it.

There’s a deceptive sin that can keep us from walking in love: pride. It’s deceptive because when you have pride, you’re usually too proud to admit it. I know this because I used to have teachings on pride and they didn’t sell well.

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

It doesn’t take long to become aware of the presence of the CIA in Laos.

When people are lame, they love to blame.

The conscience can be a strong guide in life if we allow it.

Our goal in the ’70s was to end the closed door era. There were so many things that were off limits to women: policing, firefighting, mining, piloting planes.

As a vulnerability researcher, the greatest barrier I see is our low tolerance for vulnerability. We’re almost afraid to be happy. We feel like it’s inviting disaster.

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.

Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder.

People can try to reinvent themselves. I don’t think you can really change who you are, though, because who you are is pretty much where you came from and what you’ve done up to now.

Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don’t see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.

I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

If I wouldn’t have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual lifestyle.

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

The more successful I become, the more I need a man.

If you want to make computers that really work, create a design team composed only of healthy, active women with lots else to do in their lives, and give them carte blanche.

If you are against yourself, you will never reach your highest potential. And when you criticize yourself, you’re criticizing God.

I know how to swim through backlash. I can tread water through backlash… If anything, that’s all giving me power.

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose.

I understand aggressiveness in only one way: being prepared to hurt yourself, not someone else.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

People tend to play in their comfort zone, so the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually.

To me, my house is always recreating what I lost in youth.

I want you to be everything that’s you, deep at the center of your being.

Once you start doing only what you’ve already proven you can do, you’re on the road to death.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

No sanction can stand against ignited minds.

There’s only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

Anyone that’s involved in development has discovered that all the good work that’s been done in development has been undone by the AIDS emergency.

People don’t usually compliment your character.

You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

Not everyone loves me, but I have to be okay no matter what they think about me.