I have no time to think about other writers. I am too busy with my own problems.

I want to lose weight because I want to be focused, meaning healthy.

A child wants things to be a certain way. When you get to be an adult, you just understand that some people are good, some are not, and you can’t be naive.

Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

I used to get into a lot of fights.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

We are continually shaped by the forces of coincidence.

I enjoy competition. I enjoy challenges. If a challenge is in front of me and it appeals to me, I will go ahead and conquer it.

Please don’t ask me to do that which I’ve just said I’m not going to do, because you’re burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you, and I am now filibustering.

I learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

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.

Meditation is difficult for many people because their thoughts are always on some distant object or place. One form of meditation is to label the thought as it appears and then choose to let it go.

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.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

Invest three percent of your income in yourself (self-development) in order to guarantee your future.

What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.

I’m still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.

My problem was my inability to spend much time at home. I thought my family was secure, so I went running around everyplace else. I guess I had more of an effect on other people’s kids than I did my own.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.

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

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man’s own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn’t exist except as a part of everything.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

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

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.

I can handle pain.

I really concentrate on what’s on my plate at the moment and do the very best I can.

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

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

My work and my family are very important to me.

Many people, especially young people, would like to be more independent and on their own. But it is very difficult and they suffer from feelings of isolation. I think that is one reason why young readers support my work.

Many people feel so pressured by the expectations of others that it causes them to be frustrated, miserable and confused about what they should do. But there is a way to live a simple, joy-filled, peaceful life, and the key is learning how to be led by the Holy Spirit, not the traditions or expectations of man.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

Nobody looks like they did when they were 20, so why not take advantage of the fact that you’re changing, emotionally as well as physically?

The fact is I am not having sex. But I feel absolutely ripe for the, what would you say? plucking?

Someone once asked me, ‚How long does it take to do your hair.‘ I said, ‚I don’t know, I’m never there.‘

I am just one human being.

When we give ourselves the chance to let go of all our tension, the body’s natural capacity to heal itself can begin to work.

I had a lot of resistance, and not just to fame. I was always conscious of not changing.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

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

I guess I’m living in the present more than the past.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

I don’t like it when people who are young act like they’re 40. That’s taking too much on. Putting up a shield and trying to act like you’re so mature or whatever – I don’t try to act mature. Some people might say I’m mature for my age, but it’s not something I’m trying to do, you know? I’m just me.

I look at myself like a show dog. I’ve got to keep her clipped and trimmed and in good shape.

Hair is about when you’re younger. I am my hair.