I’m on record that it didn’t really traumatize me to do away with some people.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

You gotta keep trying to find your niche and trying to fit into whatever slot that’s left for you or to make one of your own.

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you – gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.

It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.

Nothing’s ever easy as long as you go on living.

Love always ends differently and it always begins differently – especially with me.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

We all have two lives: an inner life and an outer life. Your inner life is your soul life, which includes your mind, will and emotions. Your outer life is your physical life. And while God cares about every detail of your life, He is more concerned with your inner life than your outer life.

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

I never want to change so much that people can’t recognize me.

Before finding music, I didn’t have too many aspirations. I wanted to hang out, make a little money from whatever I had to do.

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.

You know, there is always times where you feel discouraged and things coming against you, but I don’t know if I ever wanted to throw in the towel.

Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

It requires more courage to suffer than to die.

Egos are never nice. I have been a victim of it a lot of times in my career. Whenever I have used it, I have failed.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us… While what we call ‚our own life‘ remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make ‚our own life‘ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

People will try to bring you down, but you gotta go up.

What it’s like to be me? You know, it’s good to be me. My life is good.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

To have a comeback, you have to have a setback.

He who angers you conquers you.

I never expected to be anybody important.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

I don’t think I’m such an amazing person who needs to be written about.

I don’t think I’m an unlucky person.

These times are so hard, and they’re getting even harder.

For me, one of the toughest things about Valentine’s Day is that it gets geared up as the day to profess your love. See, T-E-S-T – that’s a bad word that doesn’t go with L-O-V-E.

I’m almost like three people. There’s me the, Dolly, the person. There’s me, the star. And then there’s me, the manager.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others‘ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

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.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people – more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true – in certain rare, isolated cases.

I had nothing growing up, but I always wanted to be ‚sexy,‘ even before I knew what the word was.

My faith was tested like Job. That’s the message I try to tell other people: just because you believe in God, serve God, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, people gotta realize, it don’t mean things not gonna happen to you.

Maybe I should say that memory interests me a great deal, because I think we all tell stories of our lives to ourselves as well as to other people. Well, women do, anyway. Women do this a lot. And I think when men get older, they do this too, but maybe in slightly different terms.

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

You not supposed to feel down over whatever happen to you. I mean, you’re supposed to use whatever happen to you as some type of upper, not a downer.

Getting money is not all a man’s business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.

Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement. Discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn’t say I lived in a ghetto; I’d say I lived in the ‚hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.

Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.

People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

Men must know their limitations.

When I grow up, I want to be like Balvin.

A hustler has to deal with danger and risk. It’s part of the game. You cannot control it all, nor would you want to. Chaos, unknown factors are not something to be anxious about.

It’s hard for anybody who’s been with me not to feel starved for affection when I’m making love to my ideas. Maybe it’s not meant for me to settle down and be married.

Playing Etta James in the movie ‚Cadillac Records‘ really changed me. It was a darker character, and I realized that if anything is too comfortable, I want to run from it. It’s no fun being safe.