I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

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

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

I’m nobody, who are you?

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb… and I also know that I’m not blonde.

It is very hard to not be able to engage with people in a real and honest way because they either want something from me, or they see me as something that I simply am not.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

I think what’s important is for us to decipher what is honest and what is dishonest and be accepting of those things and not operating from fear.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

The first two games for Churchill, I was so jittery that I didn’t know what to do. I was running more but didn’t know what to do. I’ve no bones accepting the fact that I didn’t know what was happening in the game.

The ‚soul‘ is one of the words you can use to talk about your innermost being, the essence of who you are.

I’m not very ambitious at all.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

I’m tough when I have to be, tender when I should be. When you find a really tough guy, he’s not a predator. He doesn’t have to prove himself. Guys who have to pretend to be tough, they ain’t. I’m tough.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

If you’re performing music that is not who you are or where you’re at, it is painful. It’s painful for the performer and for the audience.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

Thoughts are fine when you don’t confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.

Listening to and understanding our inner sufferings will resolve most of the problems we encounter.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the ‚light-hearted‘ Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the ‚deeper‘ Anne is too weak.

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it.

Working with a guy like Ice Cube on ‚Ride Along,‘ you learn so much. He’s a guy who produces, writes, and directs, so you watch and learn and ask questions. As you go, you learn and figure out what you should and shouldn’t do. I do nothing but soak up information.

I’m not this horrible, evil person.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.

I’m not generally a sensitive person, but I tend to be more sensitive toward others and what they’re going through. I don’t know if that’s the healthiest thing, but it’s the truth.

Language is the dress of thought.

If you can talk, you can write.

Like Frank Sinatra, I’m doing it my way.

Observe all men, thyself most.

You fail only if you stop writing.

I have no delusions about my likability in every scenario. I know that in order to get things done the way you want them, oftentimes your position will be unpopular.

To me, business isn’t about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials.

I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality.

Being a full human being is difficult, frightening, and problematical.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

I learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

I’ve been lucky – all the ads I’ve got, I’ve got to be myself. I haven’t had to act too much or tried too hard to be someone I’m not. I think that’s why people sort of like them. Even the Fastrack ads I did with Genelia.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

I know who I am, I know what I can and can’t do. I know what I will and won’t do. I know what I’m capable of and I don’t agree to do things that I don’t think I can pull off.

If we are to be happy, we must first react against our tendency to follow the line of least resistance, a tendency that causes us either to remain as we are, or to look primarily to activities external to ourselves for what will provide new impetus to our lives.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

My thing is this; if I’m sick enough to think it, then I’m sick enough to say it.

I’ve always been really, really aware of my insecurities – really, really aware. I never developed that thick skin that keeps you from letting things get to you.