I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.

Sometimes, I feel like one who is on the sidelines, who has missed life itself.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

I disagree with everything I used to say.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

I think I have a dualistic nature.

Every man is his own hell.

Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.

I get naturally uncomfortable when I’m put under a magnifying glass.

My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne – to beat her down, hide her.

If something can corrupt you, you’re corrupted already.

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn’t give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.

Analysis is like a lobotomy. Who wants to have all their edges shaved off?

Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us.

Can people who hunger so desperately for what other people have ever have enough?

I will praise any man that will praise me.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.

He that loves to be flattered is worthy o‘ the flatterer.

What the heck is true love? I remember feeling, back when I was 12 and ‚going‘ with this girl, ‚Is this true love?‘

I never saw myself as a folk singer.

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

I really haven’t had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I’d rather tell a story about somebody else.

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

I’ve always felt heroic about my life… As a child, I remember little girls in the playground moaning about how boys could do more than they could. I didn’t think that was the case at all. My parents didn’t treat me as a girl.

I know a lot of athletes and models are written off as just bodies. I never felt used for my body.

It’s not to much fun to know yourself too well or think you do – everyone needs a little conceit to carry them through & past the falls.

Most of the time I spend when I get up in the morning is trying to figure out what is going to happen.

To solve any problem, here are three questions to ask yourself: First, what could I do? Second, what could I read? And third, who could I ask?

Whatever role I play is a positive role; it’s a strong role. Never negative.

All through my writing life, I’ve had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they’re pretty, even if they aren’t.

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

We don’t need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker.

People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw from your experience and invest them in the future.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

O, had I but followed the arts!

I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that’s not easy.