I still have mixed feelings about what growing up is – this thing that happens to everyone, so I’ve heard.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

I have survivor’s curiosity, I guess.

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

College isn’t in everyone’s hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn’t mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

I sometimes have a tendency to walk on the dark side.

To me, my house is always recreating what I lost in youth.

By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.

I’m mortified to be on the stage, but then again, it’s the only place where I’m happy.

I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

Complaining is dangerous business. It can damage or even destroy your relationship with God, your relationships with other people, and even with your relationship with yourself.

You can’t do something forever.

I’m not going to limit myself just because people won’t accept the fact that I can do something else.

I have trouble with letting go. That’s my problem.

Life is about growing and improving and getting better.

One thing about me is I try to be honest.

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves.

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.

Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure it.

It was my delusion and naivety that brought me here.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

Forgiveness is not a feeling – it’s a decision we make because we want to do what’s right before God. It’s a quality decision that won’t be easy and it may take time to get through the process, depending on the severity of the offense.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

When I was young, I could not imagine being old. My mother said, and the doctor confirmed, that I had an unusual amount of energy; and it followed me into young adulthood.

It’s very unnatural to be someone for so many people. But of course it’s very nice.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

Sometimes I catch myself stooping, and whenever I am like that, I am sure something is not quite right.

I think I had a mild case of Asperger’s as a younger guy, but that typically just wears off after a while.

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.

The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.

If a person doesn’t change, there’s something really wrong with him.

Live the life you’ve dreamed.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

Deficiency motivation doesn’t work. It will lead to a life-long pursuit of try to fix me. Learn to appreciate what you have and where and who you are.

The highest result of education is tolerance.

A warrior is not a person that carries a gun. The biggest war you ever go through is right between your own ears. It’s in your mind. We’re all going through a war in our mind, and we have to callus our mind to fight that war and to win that war.

We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

Mine is better than ours.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

I want to be just a pure spiritual leader.

Remember that your imagination is yours and yours alone. You have the inborn capacity to use it in any way that you choose. No one else is responsible for your imagination. Anything placed in your imagination and held there ultimately becomes your reality.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.

I made a commitment to completely cut out drinking and anything that might hamper me from getting my mind and body together. And the floodgates of goodness have opened upon me – spiritually and financially.

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

I’m perpetually lonely.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.