I was going to McDonald’s and Taco Bell every day. The kids behind the counter knew me – it wouldn’t even faze them. Or I’d sit up at Denny’s or Big Boy and just eat by myself. It was sad. I got so heavy that people started to not recognize me.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

I didn’t get a lot of awards as a player. But they did have a Bob Uecker Day Off for me once in Philly.

Don’t just eat McDonald’s, get something a bit better. Eat a salad. That’s what fashion is. It’s something that is a bit better.

When I won the first Grammy, there was no other feeling like that feeling. It just made me feel like I came so far, like that was just a dream a few years before that, and then it was happening right then.

I was very depressed when I was 19… I would go back to my apartment every day and I would just sit there. It was quiet and it was lonely. It was still. It was just my piano and myself. I had a television and I would leave it on all the time just to feel like somebody was hanging out with me.

If I’m a star, then the people made me a star.

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.

Feeling like you’re respected among the people who do the same thing you do is incredible and necessary.

It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

All I can do is try to create my own brand and have people appreciate me for that.

The nice thing is that when people come up to me, it’s the football they remember, not all the other rubbish.

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

When you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up. Once you get to the point where Hollywood sees that you create results, then the demand for you becomes higher.

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

I always felt an outsider.

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it – oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.

No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.

Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends.

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.

The concept of loneliness and exile and self-sufficiency continually bucks me up.

I don’t like being alone.

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.

When the people you love are gone, you’re alone.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

I am alone; I am always alone no matter what.

If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

I don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what, but if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y or z wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it.

Winning ‚Motor Trend‘ Car of the year is probably the closest thing to winning the Oscar or Emmy of the car industry.

In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity.

Sometimes, wearing a scarf and a polo coat and no makeup and with a certain attitude of walking, I go shopping or just look at people living. But then, you know, there will be a few teenagers who are kind of sharp, and they’ll say, ‚Hey, just a minute. You know who I think that is?‘ And they’ll start tailing me. And I don’t mind.

If you have a success you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.

Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.

It’s flattering to people who stop you and say that you’ve helped them and all. But, again, you know, you’ve got to stay humble because as quick as you came up, you can come down.

It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.

Each doctor makes a much, much more important job than I do, but at the end, nobody talks about him. We all know about it, but we don’t really think about it.

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

I’m the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him.

It was easy being healthy when I was young. I was full of energy, so sports and physical challenges were fun. But as I got older and the spring left my step, exercise became harder, and eating, drinking and watching TV became easier. By the time I was 50, I’d put on 50 pounds.

I think that we have opportunities all around us – sometimes we just don’t recognize them.

I never needed much, and I never thought I’d get more than what I had. A trip to Burger King was the biggest thing in the world to me. Heaven.

Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, ‚I want to get out and become like him‘. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

Having other comedians complimenting my work is the biggest accolade that I can get.

There’s a lot of great movies that have won the Academy Award, and a lot of great movies that haven’t. You just do the best you can.

If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.

The worst times were the years I was alone. The image to the public entering the courtroom was eight men, of a certain size, and then this little woman sitting to the side. That was not a good image for the public to see.

God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas, but for scars.

To win MVP was a dream come true for sure, but there are guys who have done this multiple times.

My friends, there are no friends.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

Because you know when you first become famous, you start walking a little different because people are staring at you.