I have the problems of, I must confess, old age.

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

I regarded finding I had a form of Alzheimer’s as an insult and decided to do my best to marshal any kind of forces I could against this wretched disease. I have posterior cortical atrophy or PCA. They say, rather ingenuously, that if you have Alzheimer’s it’s the best form of Alzheimer’s to have.

Touring is hard on the body.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.

Maybe I don’t have the most common kind of motor neuron disease, which usually kills in two or three years.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

When I reached 80, my world turned upside down physically. I’ve had a lot of physical problems.

O‘ What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time.

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.

Never say anything about yourself you do not want to come true.

I was very depressed when I was 19… I would go back to my apartment every day and I would just sit there. It was quiet and it was lonely. It was still. It was just my piano and myself. I had a television and I would leave it on all the time just to feel like somebody was hanging out with me.

How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them.

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

I was awfully curious to find out why I didn’t go insane.

There’s a gap between what I want to do, what I do on camera, and what gets edited. Right? So the goal is to try and close the gaps. What’s the biggest compliment is if I read a review and it’s exactly what I wrote down in my diary before ever filming it. That’s really cool. That’s the biggest signifier of closing the gaps.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

I am in my own head most of the time.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

I think that cancer is a life form that exists out there, and it exists in us. I think even the concept of healing is a spiritual principle that we have to really look at. I think the word itself is something we ought to get rid of, because it implies that there is illness – that there is something wrong.

Starting at about, I guess, forever, I’ve always looked forward to getting older. When I was 14, I couldn’t wait to be 16 and get a driver’s license.

To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

As you get older, you have more responsibilities; you have more commitments, more events, kids, you’re married now. You still have all the things that you’ve had, plus you just keep adding.

Of course there are moments that you wonder how long you should be doing it because there are other aspects which are not nice, of this lifestyle. But I just love winning.

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.

Every action has a consequence. It may be good for strengthening. And I have no doubt that lifting a lot of weights can get you stronger. I just don’t know if lifting stronger weights can keep you healthy, or it can keep you doing your job better, especially for a pro athlete.

I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.

I sing and play the guitar, and I’m a walking, talking bacterial infection.

Here comes 40. I’m feeling my age and I’ve ordered the Ferrari. I’m going to get the whole mid-life crisis package.

I’m not a god – I do bad things.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

We should all start to live before we get too old.

Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We’ve been so busy damning ourselves for years. We’ve done it all, and yet we don’t take credit for it.

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did.

I know my flaws before other people point them out to me.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that’s Memoirs.

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

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

Many a man thinks he is patient when, in reality, he is indifferent.

When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?

I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?

I’m almost like three people. There’s me the, Dolly, the person. There’s me, the star. And then there’s me, the manager.

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

What it’s like to be me? You know, it’s good to be me. My life is good.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

I wish I knew why I am so anguished.

I’m a super-duper over-analyzer. You mix that with self-doubt and pressure, and that’s never healthy.