I’m over being a pop star. I don’t wanna be a hot girl. I wanna be iconic. And I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. I feel like I’m highly respected, which is more important than any award or any amount of records. And I feel like there comes a point when being a pop star is not enough.

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.

You may make some mistakes – but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.

I’d like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit.

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

I’ve done many ads because that’s my new career. It’s an inspiring extension for my mind.

I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

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.

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

Everyone goes through adversity in life, but what matters is how you learn from it.

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can – you must – try to seek God in every human life.

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Me not finishing school – in my head, I still have this insecurity when I’m talking to someone educated.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion, I am not a professor.

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

My work is the only ground I’ve ever had to stand on. To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation, but I’m working on the foundation.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.

The true identity theft is not financial. It’s not in cyberspace. It’s spiritual. It’s been taken.

There’s room for role models who make mistakes.

There are so many men and women who hold no distinctive positions but whose contribution towards the development of society has been enormous.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

The thing I always say to people is this: ‚If you avoid failure, you also avoid success.‘

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

People want to act like they know celebrities. They want to see pictures. They want to know where you’re going. They want to hear you talk about your family.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

Live the life you’ve dreamed.

There are no second acts in American lives.

I believe enlightenment or revelation comes in daily life. I look for joy, the peace of action. You need action. I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

People who want the most approval get the least and people who need approval the least get the most.

When I was younger, I was testing myself and questioning everything, but now it’s less about that and more about these are the years of my life with my family.

What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats.

A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.

Satan wants us to constantly focus on everything that is wrong with us and look at how far we still have to go. But God desires for us to rejoice in how far we have already come.

Good manners sometimes means simply putting up with other people’s bad manners.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

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.

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

I get really restless when I haven’t worked for a day and a half. I have a recurring dream that people are lined up next to my bed, waiting for autographs and taking pictures of me!

I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix.

When I came into this industry, I was never afraid to be myself.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

My reputation precedes me now.