I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

I gather from motivation around me – from a lot of personalities who have done well in their respective fields.

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.

When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.

You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

What comes out when life squeezes you? When someone hurts or offends you? If anger, pain and fear come out of you, it’s because that’s what’s inside.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.

I have to keep improving myself and challenging myself.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people – more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true – in certain rare, isolated cases.

Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.

Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.

No person is important enough to make me angry.

I always thought it was wrong for me to take credit for the work that I did. I don’t think that anymore.

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn’t say I lived in a ghetto; I’d say I lived in the ‚hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

I don’t let even a day go by wherein I don’t give at 100 per cent.

I was a bit challenged when I was younger to stay on the right path.

Not being afraid to be wrong – I had to learn how to do that.

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

I believe time wounds all heels.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

I made bad decisions. I’m not denying that I made bad decisions.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

I’ve never been one to sit back and go, ‚I’d better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don’t want to lose them.‘

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

I mean… in life… what relationship is easy?

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

I don’t live in the past at all; I’m always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

It’s the journey of self, I guess. You start with this kind of loner, outside guy, which a lot of people can relate to, and he goes out into the world.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

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

Egos are never nice. I have been a victim of it a lot of times in my career. Whenever I have used it, I have failed.