I’m not a person who defends myself very often. I kind of let my actions speak for me.

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.

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

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

Nobody looks like they did when they were 20, so why not take advantage of the fact that you’re changing, emotionally as well as physically?

I am who I am today because of my mother.

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

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun, and I think I’m sort of building up to doing something else quite soon.

When you realize who you live for, and who’s important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I’m gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it – and I lived it for me.

I am, as a character, at times, a little overbearing. I recognize that.

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

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

I want to work; then, as my kids get older, I want to have adventures. I want to visit all their countries: learn and live inside all their cultures.

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

I want to do a certain thing in the world, and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.

As long as I’m learning something, I figure I’m OK – it’s a decent day.

I would rather make my name than inherit it.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

It’s absolutely normal that different human beings want to go different ways.

I was raised to be independent.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

For a long time, I had the idea that I would do a certain amount of work the best I could, and then I would reach a comfort zone, and I wouldn’t be pushed to write more. I would become a different person. It’s a surprise to me that this hasn’t happened. Your body ages, but your mind is the same.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

I’m mortified to be on the stage, but then again, it’s the only place where I’m happy.

You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity.

As I get older, I tend to put more into family than I used to.

I’m not trying to be sexy. It’s just my way of expressing myself when I move around.

I never got into training to be an All-Ireland boxing champ or to win a belt. At the start, I just got into it to learn how to defend myself when I got into situations.

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

It definitely has learning a lesson about the way you’re living your life. I wouldn’t compare our movie to that, but it has a structure where it’s about a man who doesn’t appreciate all that he has and finds out at the end that life has been great and he has to enjoy that.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

For me, it’s about the way I carry myself and the way I treat other people. My relationship and how I feel about God and what He does for me, is something deeply personal. It’s where I came from, my family, I was brought up in a religious household and that’s very important to me.

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.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

My life has been very full.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.

In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

I think I have always had a little humor.

Most people already know what they’re doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.

As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.

If you were to ask me what I want to do – I don’t want to be a celebrity, I want to make a difference.

I like pushing boundaries.

I’m not afraid to look like an idiot.

People say you have to hit rock bottom, and, I can tell you, almost dying is as rock bottom as it gets.

The problem with me, as far as getting married and having a family, is that my comedy is so important to me. So I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good a dad as my dad.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

I know this sounds strange, but as a kid, I was really shy. Painfully shy. The turning point was freshman year, when I was the biggest geek alive. No one, I mean no one, even talked to me.

The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom.