I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one’s nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

I’ve done the bad-boy thing. It was fun for a good three months. But the thing about bad boys is, you have to keep in mind, you’re never gonna marry a bad boy.

When you realize who you live for, and who’s important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I’m gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it – and I lived it for me.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

It seems to me that terrestrial beings, as they become more autonomous, psychologically richer, shut themselves up in a way against one another, and at the same time gradually become strangers to the cosmic environment and currents, impenetrable to one another, and incapable of exteriorizing themselves.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

One thing I hope I’ll never be is drunk with my own power. And anybody who says I am will never work in this town again.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

We all have done something unethical.

The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

I shall the effect of this good lesson keeps as watchman to my heart.

I love getting out of my comfort zone.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

I do not live on false promises. I cannot afford to live on bad advice.

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn’t write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

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 believe that one key to success is to accept truth, no matter how it’s spoken.

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

To this day, some of my closest friends say, ‚Gaga, you know, everything’s great. You’re a singer; your dreams have come true.‘ But, still, when certain things are said to you over and over again as you’re growing up, it stays with you and you wonder if they’re true.

I don’t think a lot of people know personally who I am.

I’m super self-critical, which I think is good, because then I get exactly what I want. I’m critical of other people, too – I try not to be, though.

It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

There’s two sorts of fear: one you embrace and one you should listen to and turn the other way.

I’d always somehow felt slightly as if I’d been born in the wrong country.

Real life is the life that’s in you, not your circumstances, like where you live or what job you have or who you’re in relationship with.

I don’t think there’s anyone who would say they don’t want or need more of God’s power in their life.

For an author, the nice characters aren’t much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They’re doing it for themselves.

You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

My number one thing? Don’t overleverage yourself. Don’t say you can do something when you really can’t.

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

The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.

I kept a diary right after I was born. Day 1: Tired from the move. Day 2: Everyone thinks I’m an idiot.

Now I realize that from ’72 through to about ’76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star.

I didn’t want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn’t like it. I always wanted to do other things.

The human being is a strange mixture of blind instinct, on one hand, and conscience, on the other.

There are a lot of things I never did, because I believe in watching those true Hollywood stories and I see how easy it is to lose track of your life.

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.

I’m not intimidated by how people perceive me.

Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.

Sometimes you need faith and victory spoken over your life. Words have created power. When you receive them into your spirit, they can ignite seeds of increase on the inside.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

Me, as a person, I grow. I’m like a chameleon. You know? That is a gift and a curse for me. But more so a gift, because it never puts me in a box.

I didn’t consider myself a fashion designer at all at the time of punk. I was just using fashion as a way to express my resistance and to be rebellious. I came from the country, and by the time I got to London, I considered myself to be very stupid. It was my ambition to understand the world I live in.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that’s happening to me, and some days I feel everyone’s waiting for me to mess up.

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

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

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.