I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years, I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people, ‚I am deaf.‘ If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession, it is a terrible handicap.

People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?

Jiu Jitsu is a great workout both mentally and physically. You want to be strong for it and flexible for it.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

I look like a casual, laid-back guy, but it’s like a circus in my head.

People have so much going on in their heads. I’m like, If you could write a song, you’d feel so much better!

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

My body is weird. I wake up when the sun comes up, and it’s hard for me to go to sleep. My thoughts just take over.

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

We can fear things into existence. Fear looks into the future and imagines the worst that can happen.

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.

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.

You have to listen very carefully and tell the truth if you are going to get a paranoid person to open up to you.

I get nervous for everything – literally everything.

Where fear is, happiness is not.

Total relaxation is the secret to enjoying sitting meditation. I sit with my spine upright, but not rigid; and I relax all the muscles in my body.

Life is grim, and we don’t have to be grim all the time.

There is no austerity equal to a balanced mind, and there is no happiness equal to contentment; there is no disease like covetousness, and no virtue like mercy.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

I like to let things breathe.

If we weren’t all crazy, we’d just go insane.

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

Mind over mattress.

But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac.

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything – diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.

I’m not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills. But I do think that if you have thinks that bother you, things that are unresolved, the more that you talk about them, write about them, the less serious they become.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.

I have a slight bit of OCD, I think. I’m not walking around flipping light switches. But when I say I’m going to do something, I have to do it.

I think beating myself up sometimes and knowing I am not happy when I do it makes me work harder to do a good job.

Give yourself a gift of five minutes of contemplation in awe of everything you see around you. Go outside and turn your attention to the many miracles around you. This five-minute-a-day regimen of appreciation and gratitude will help you to focus your life in awe.

Hatred is settled anger.

Do not laugh much or often or unrestrainedly.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

I think women go crazy for a reason. It’s not like it just happens.

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance – the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it; better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.

What I want for my fans and for the world, for anyone who feels pain, is to lean into that pain and embrace it as much as they can and begin the healing process.

Women in particular need to keep an eye on their physical and mental health, because if we’re scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don’t have a lot of time to take care of ourselves. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‚to do‘ list.

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

I believe that everyone experiences depression to some degree at some time in their lives. And there are probably millions of people who live with a low level of sadness and heaviness day in and day out.

As a human being, anger is a part of our mind. Irritation also part of our mind. But you can do – anger come, go. Never keep in your sort of – your inner world, then create a lot of suspicion, a lot of distrust, a lot of negative things, more worry.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamours and interferes with the music I hear in my head.

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.

You don’t always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that’s plenty.

I’ve had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.

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

Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity of others.

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.

Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you’re feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you’ll feel better because they know that everything is just as it is. There’s nothing to get excited about. They just know. They’re saviours.

What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.