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

I enjoy competition. I enjoy challenges. If a challenge is in front of me and it appeals to me, I will go ahead and conquer it.

Why don’t you start believing that no matter what you have or haven’t done, that your best days are still out in front of you.

If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

There are phases in life which surface at times, and it makes you understand that despite you working hard, everything what you are doing is probably not enough. That’s when you need to look around, and beyond.

Everyone goes through adversity in life, but what matters is how you learn from it.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

Yeah, I was a delinquent. It was when I was in the ninth grade. I was doing stupid stuff, and the cops came into the class. I was humiliated more than anything.

To be happy we must not be too concerned with others.

Know that any and all thoughts that you have regarding your own skills, interests, and inclinations are valid. To reinforce the validity of your thoughts, keep them private. Tell yourself that they’re between you and God.

If I make a fool of myself, who cares? I’m not frightened by anyone’s perception of me.

Every seven years, I sit down and make a whole new plan.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

You know, most people really don’t know me.

The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they’re 95 percent dead wood.

Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it’s unbelievable!

You don’t have to give way to careless speech or complaining. You don’t have to let your feelings get in the way of what God wants to do in your life.

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.‘

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.

The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom.

Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

Guarding your heart and protecting your dignity are a little bit more important than clarifying the emotions of someone who’s only texting you back three words. I’ve learned that from trying to figure out people who don’t deserve to be figured out.

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

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

At the end of the day, I understand that life has road blocks, and life is like school – you’ll be tested; we gotta pass it.

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

Without being the most confident person in the world, I think I am the right person for Liverpool.

I just feel so much more comfortable and confident every game I play.

Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real achievement is liking what you see in the mirror every morning.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living.

My dad seemed comfortable with his decision to be a ‚have-not,‘ but I knew that I wasn’t.

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

I remember, when I was a young guy in the SEAL teams, I was very afraid of making mistakes and looking stupid or doing dumb things and getting a bad reputation.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.

When you face a ‚performance‘ that might provoke the ‚I’m scared‘ response, choose love and approach your opportunity as a chance to dance with God. It’s more fun than ‚Dancing with the Stars!‘

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.

There are going to be things I’m not going to be great at, times when I make mistakes, 100%.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

When you seek the presence of your creative Spirit and are filled with passion about virtually everything you undertake, you’ll successfully remove the roadblocks from your life and enjoy the active presence of Spirit.