I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer – it just happened.

I definitely don’t plead guilty to being a heartthrob.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

I’ll tell you who I absolutely adore: Ian McEwan.

I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that’s not easy.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

I’m really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

I have trouble with letting go. That’s my problem.

You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.

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

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.

I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest – but suffer from a constant strain.

Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.

Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.

I’ve never been reckless – it’s always calculated. I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.

I don’t think I’m bad for people. If I did think I was bad for people, I would go back to driving a truck, and I really mean this.

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

Real life is the life that’s in you, not your circumstances, like where you live or what job you have or who you’re in relationship with.

He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.

Real riches are the riches possessed inside.

I’ve watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it’s because they tend to believe all the hype that’s out there. I don’t think there’s that much hype about me.

You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things; either way, you’re obsessed with yourself, and I’m not – you can become unhinged so easily.

Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.

I’m always asked, ‚What’s the secret to success?‘ But there are no secrets. Be humble. Be hungry. And always be the hardest worker in the room.

I mean, when you grow up in the inner city and you grow up in a single-parent household, that’s – those are humbling times, you know?

Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.

Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you.

How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?

If I feel anxious every time someone is staring at me, well, I can’t control what they stare at, but my reaction is, I’m just not going to go outside the house. I’m going to stay in and chill. And when I do go out, I understand what comes along with that.

No one but a fool is always right.

I am not happy, and the quest for happiness as a principal objective is not part of my world. Of course, ever since I can remember, I have done what I felt like doing.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

The truth doesn’t hurt unless it ought to.

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

One of the most important decisions you’ll ever make is choosing the kind of universe you exist in: is it helpful and supportive or hostile and unsupportive? Your answer to this question will make all the difference in terms of how you live your life and what kind of Divine assistance you attract.

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.

I don’t join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn’t have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in Heaven – that’s none of my business, ultimately. I won’t lecture her on the philosophy of science.

God didn’t make me to make movies, flex muscles, buy gold. What you love the most becomes your God… If I never make another dollar, my life is complete.

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

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

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

I had my jazz club and I had enough money. So I didn’t have to write for my living.

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.

He is lost who is possessed by carnal desire.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.

I don’t need to be vindicated, and I don’t want attention.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

‚Thank you‘ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

I said I was ‚The Greatest,‘ I never said I was the smartest!

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

Nobody can hurt me without my permission.

I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.