I seated ugliness on my knee, and almost immediately grew tired of it.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

It’s fun to be hopelessly in love. It’s dangerous, but it’s fun.

I don’t think I get that upset over things.

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure.

I make a lot of expressions constantly. I’m animated.

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

Looking back on the production of ‚Nevermind,‘ I’m embarrassed by it now. It’s closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.

All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

You cannot step into the same river twice.

Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

Those movies sure got me into a rut.

I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.

People have different emotional levels. Especially when you’re young.

Science never makes things that do not have to do with what we feel, by which I mean what we want and what we fear.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I’m angry about bankers. About the government.

You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.

Time is the only critic without ambition.

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

Having a child, that’s always been my biggest fear. I want a child and I fear a child.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

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

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.

No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn’t find the weapons. I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do.

In this bright future you can’t forget your past.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

Who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl?

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.

It is a common saying, and in everybody’s mouth, that life is but a sojourn.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‚yours,‘ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I’m in a small way quite proud of some of it – I only wish I’d done more.

Fondly we think we honor merit then, When we but praise ourselves in other men.

I think that you can love people without it being the great love.

Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.

It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

I dote on his very absence.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

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

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I’m generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we’re providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we’re doing so well on so many of these things. I think it’s important to have gratitude for that.

If you want to make someone feel emotion, you have to make them let go. Listening to something is an act of surrender.

Shall I, that have destroyed my Preservers, return home?

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

‚Tis love that makes the world go round, my baby.