I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

Read a record number of books in a given month. If you’re focused on intellectual growth, train yourself to study harder and longer than ever before.

You will be as much value to others as you have been to yourself.

Love is a state of being.

I can do whatever I want.

When it comes to social media, there are just times I turn off the world, you know. There are just some times you have to give yourself space to be quiet, which means you’ve got to set those phones down.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

I realised a little bit to my astonishment that I can give a lecture for a thousand people, and there will be this tumultuous applause, so, you know, I have the feeling well, it can’t be all that bad.

I don’t even know how to speak up for myself, because I don’t really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice. And if you’re always the new kid, you never get a chance to adapt, so your confidence is just zilch.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.

I am an angel. I was sent here from God to heal.

Enjoy the satisfaction that comes from doing little things well.

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

I love dresses, and I’ve definitely thought about designing them someday. I just want to make sure that I wait until the time is perfect and I can do it right.

I am particularly drawn to the form of meditation called Japa. I know it works.

I guess I’m living in the present more than the past.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.

When I was writing ‚Kitchen Confidential,‘ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

I want to rethink ‚surrender‘ as an active verb.

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don’t know what that is; I don’t think too much about that.

Perfectionists demand perfection from themselves first and foremost.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

Imagination rules the world.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.

I put my flaws on front street. So the world accepted my flaws, so I don’t have any flaws.

What we think, we become.

If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

I am not the humblest person in the world. I admit that.

Mastery passes often for egotism.

Don’t grow accustomed to living with less, doing less, and being less to the point that you eventually sit back and accept it.

And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don’t think anyone in my family would really feel I’d done them an injustice by saying that. We didn’t see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‚to do‘ list.

I’ve never had a divorce, but I’ve seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can’t write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I’m able to kind of express it, or their joy.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

I have met 18 million youth, and each wants to be unique.

I feel matured in a way that I’m happy about. I’m at this other stage in my life – and it’s not a bad thing at all.

Nothing on ‚Relapse‘ and very little on ‚Recovery‘ was produced by me.