If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did – which was to hide.

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‚I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.‘ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‚Yes, I deserve it.‘

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

If you get your ego in your way, you will only look to other people and circumstances to blame.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

I feel real good because it’s about representing the young world and how to uplift each other and how to push us to be greater and make sure we don’t fall or get trapped or get in trouble, you know what I mean. Stay focused, you know what I mean.

Above all, this country is our own. Nobody has to get up in the morning and worry what his neighbors think of him. Being a Jew is no problem here.

I think there is a lot made out of age, and what age you feel.

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.

Life is a matter of really tough choices.

Even if you’re happy with the life you’ve chosen, you’re still curious about the other options.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

I am just one human being.

The reason that I’m here at all is because of my relationship with my family and their encouragement of me to be a musician and to work hard. As long as I stay there in that space, I can do anything. That’s my truth.

For some reason I did something where I realized I could get a reaction. That was when I broke out of my shell at school, because I really didn’t have any friends or anything like that and I just kind of was going along, and then finally I did this zany thing, and all of a sudden I had tons of friends.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

Always say ‚yes‘ to the present moment… Surrender to what is. Say ‚yes‘ to life – and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you.

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.

The more you seek the uncomfortable, the more you will become comfortable.

It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.

The wisest hustler can suddenly fall for the worst tramp and lose all of his money on her. The hustler is aware of his own weaknesses and openings to con. This awareness is his edge.

Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for goodness.

I allow myself to fail. I allow myself to break. I’m not afraid of my flaws.

In Puerto Rico we dance to everything.

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

The essential lesson I’ve learned in life is to just be yourself. Treasure the magnificent being that you are and recognize first and foremost you’re not here as a human being only. You’re a spiritual being having a human experience.

I have made a few mistakes early on that I admit myself, and there have been times when I have gone over the top and done things that you shouldn’t do in international cricket, but that’s how you learn.

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.

I look like a casual, laid-back guy, but it’s like a circus in my head.

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.

I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.

He was so depressed, he tried to commit suicide by inhaling next to an Armenian.

Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.

I worked out early on to give up things I couldn’t do well at all.

We boil at different degrees.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.

I keep working because I learn something new all the time.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

Everything’s intentional. It’s just filling in the dots.

Many people in this world are still so identified with every thought that arises in their head. There is not the slightest space of awareness there.

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

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.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?