I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

I do believe in the old saying, ‚What does not kill you makes you stronger.‘ Our experiences, good and bad, make us who we are. By overcoming difficulties, we gain strength and maturity.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

You have to be smart. The easy days are over.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

One of the things I did when I discovered this huge importance of being vulnerable is very happily moved away from the shame research, because that’s such a downer, and people hate that topic. It’s not that vulnerability is the upside, but it’s better than shame, I guess.

The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.

I think it’s healthy for a person to be nervous. It means you care – that you work hard and want to give a great performance. You just have to channel that nervous energy into the show.

Dread, which is closely related to fear, steals the ability to enjoy ordinary life and makes people anxious about the future. It keeps them from looking forward to the next day, the next month, or the next decade.

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.

It is important for you to know who you are and who you may become. It is more important than what you do, even as vital as your work is and will be.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Around every corner, always protect the engine that powers you.

Somewhere deep down there’s a decent man in me, he just can’t be found.

Never take anything for granted.

Cowardice… is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.

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

Unlike some politicians, I can admit to a mistake.

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

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

People are looking for something a little more stable; people are feeling like they need to get closer to God.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

Don’t ever forget two things I’m going to tell you. One, don’t believe everything that’s written about you. Two, don’t pick up too many checks.

His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.

Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.

A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

I’m quite a chauvinistic person.

How one life turns out is not dependent on what people do to us or what they don’t do for us.

I’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don’t suffer anymore.

When I was a kid, I had a tendency to criticize. But when I did, my mum would whisk me off to the bathroom to stand in front of a mirror. Ten minutes, never less. To think about how criticism is a poor reflection on the one who criticizes.

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

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others‘ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

I imagine I will be less involved in film and be focused more on family and foreign affairs.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

He is lost who is possessed by carnal desire.

I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.

I’m always attracted to people who interest me. They’ve got to be people who are really true to themselves somehow, and who are always trying to do something that makes their life more interesting, or better, or something for somebody else. They’re interested in people.

We’ve been programmed, from the time that we were very, very little, about what we can’t do – about what is impossible.

Man’s enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

We choose what attitudes we have right now. And it’s a continuing choice.

I kept a diary right after I was born. Day 1: Tired from the move. Day 2: Everyone thinks I’m an idiot.