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

God enters by a private door into every individual.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

We’ve never advocated violence; violence is inflicted upon us. But we do believe in self-defense for ourselves and for black people.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

The goal of jiu-jitsu in self-defense isn’t to take someone down to the ground – the goal in jiu-jitsu for self-defense is actually to be able to defend yourself on the ground, get up, and get away from an attacker. That’s what the goal is.

I don’t have a problem with ageing – in fact, I embrace that aspect of it. And am able to and obviously am going to be able to quite easily… it doesn’t faze me at all.

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

The devil is a peace stealer, and he works hard to set us up to get upset. But we can learn how to change our approach so we don’t live upset all of the time. And Jesus gives us the best example to follow.

The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. Always stay near me, for tomorrow I will have much to do and more than I ever had, and tomorrow blood will leave my body above the breast.

I had a lovers quarrel with the world.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

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.

I am absolutely my own biggest critic.

I’m afraid to fail again.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

I don’t live in the past at all; I’m always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.

Don’t feel sorry for me.

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

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 brought myself down. I impeached myself by resigning.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

I woke up one day and thought: ‚I want to write a book about the history of my body.‘ I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.

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.

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

I’m not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills. But I do think that if you have thinks that bother you, things that are unresolved, the more that you talk about them, write about them, the less serious they become.

I would rather make my name than inherit it.

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

I’ve learned never to say never.

Real riches are the riches possessed inside.

Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

Live the life you’ve dreamed.

I will not be concerned at other men’s not knowing me; I will be concerned at my own want of ability.

When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.

Vanity is great motivation, to be fair.

The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.

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.

Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.

I had a lot of resistance, and not just to fame. I was always conscious of not changing.

For me, ‚risky‘ is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.

It’s so easy to settle for less than God’s best for us because we don’t always feel like taking responsibility for our behavior or putting forth some effort to do what we need to do so we can accomplish great things for God and help people. But the cost of settling for less is actually harder than being completely obedient to God’s will.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.

If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before.

I can’t tell anybody else how to run their life or their business, but I really believe I’ve got a good bead on myself.

I always say that women should wear whatever makes them feel good about themselves. That’s what I always try to do.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

I like to take every day just searching my own heart, making sure that I’m on course, and I’m doing what God wants me to do. I’m real good with not looking to the critics and looking straight ahead.

I am happy and I’m single.