I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.

Start wide, expand further, and never look back.

I learned a long time ago how to be coachable.

The men I idolized built their bodies and became somebody – like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger – and I thought, ‚That can be me.‘ So I started working out. The funny thing is I didn’t realize back then that I was having a defining moment.

My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.

Always do whatever’s next.

People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

I used to have a real problem with self-pity. Every time the devil would throw a pity party, I would attend.

Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.

I understand aggressiveness in only one way: being prepared to hurt yourself, not someone else.

Don’t be humble… you’re not that great.

Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

I like to complain and do nothing to make things better.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.

I approach love differently now that I know it’s hard for it to work out.

Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.

Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that’s the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.

I still consider myself a little, fat kid from Hawaii.

I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It’s hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

‚Perfection‘ to me is, I walk away from a situation and say, ‚I did everything I could do right there. There was nothing more that I could do.‘ I was a hundred percent, like the meter was at the top. There was nothing else I could have done. You know? Like, I worked as hard as I possibly could have. That’s perfection.

Single life is so overrated.

I never go into a situation with any type of expectations.

Check your ego at the door. The ego can be the great success inhibitor. It can kill opportunities, and it can kill success.

Over the years I’ve learned how to lock myself up in a prison of hope, knowing that God has nothing but His best planned for me. He promised me things concerning my ministry and my life.

Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I’m learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, ‚I can’t go to Kmart. I can’t take my kids to the haunted house.‘

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

Don’t bring your need to the marketplace, bring your skill. If you don’t feel well, tell your doctor, but not the marketplace. If you need money, go to the bank, but not the marketplace.

If you want to shine like a sun, first burn like a sun.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Critics only make you stronger. You have to look at what they are saying as feedback. Sometimes the feedback helps, and other times, it’s just noise that can be a distraction.

I’m terrified of losing my voice.

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

Mine is better than ours.

I am absolutely my own biggest critic.

I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

I am a walking piece of art every day, with my dreams and my ambitions forward at all times in an effort to inspire my fans to lead their life in that way.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

The idea of going to school and getting a job is the most destructive one in your brain.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.