I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

He is lost who is possessed by carnal desire.

I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.

I’m a human being. I’ve got opinions, I’m not always right, I’m not always on time, I don’t always say things in the proper way, but my intentions are always extremely pure.

I’d like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit.

If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

I do suffer from depression, I suppose. Which isn’t that unusual. You know, a lot of people do.

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

I’m Mickey Mouse. They don’t know who’s inside the suit.

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

I tend to get bored quickly, which means I must be boring.

We will always tend to fulfill our own expectation of ourselves.

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

I suppose my best attribute, if you want to call it that, is sincerity. I can sell sincerity because that’s the way I am.

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.

I kind of make a film for myself to sort of express myself.

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.

The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.

I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.

The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one’s self.

I don’t do things for the response or for the controversy. I just live my life.

It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.

I’m actually a very honest person, and sometimes I end up like, ‚Man, I said too much.‘ It’s hard for me not to tell the truth when you ask me.

Our necessities never equal our wants.

Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.

Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.

In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I’m always going to feel everything. It’s my nature.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

For me, time is the greatest mystery of all. The fact is that we’re dreaming all the time. That’s what really gets me. We have a fathomless lake of unconsciousness just beneath our skulls.

A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who’s been dead for 15 years.

Hollywood is not suited for me, and I am not suited for it.

Silence is a source of great strength.

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

I’ve lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

Your Highest Self is not just an idea that sounds lofty and spiritual. It is a way of being. It is the very first principle that you must come to understand and embrace as you move toward attracting to you that which you want and need for this parenthesis in eternity that you know as your life.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

We should take care not to make the intellect our goal; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

I like to be myself, and I don’t pretend. For instance, I don’t dress up for occasions; I am what I am.

The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.

So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.

When you are angry or frustrated, what comes out? Whatever it is, it’s a good indication of what you’re made of.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

My life is my argument.

My son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

I’ve watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it’s because they tend to believe all the hype that’s out there. I don’t think there’s that much hype about me.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

As an athlete, you’d better laugh at yourself when you slip in the mud.

My work is the only ground I’ve ever had to stand on. To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation, but I’m working on the foundation.

The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized – never knowing.

I don’t mind telling a dark side.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.