I’m seeing the world partially through the eyes of a kid. Not all the time. There’s no black and white to it. But sometimes I’m seeing it like I’m 4.

Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.

In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house? For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him.

I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

I’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Being young is a great advantage, since we see the world from a new perspective and we are not afraid to make radical changes.

My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

You send a boy to school in order to make friends – the right sort.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.

Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

I’m an idealist without illusions.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

If you would judge, understand.

If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

Ask an older person you respect to tell you his or her greatest regret.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

When you’re around kids you can be a little kid yourself and pretend that life is magic and you don’t have to be one of those sweaty people going to work every day.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

When you pick up a book, everyone knows it’s imaginary. You don’t have to pretend it’s not a book. We don’t have to pretend that people don’t write books. That omniscient third-person narration isn’t the only way to do it. Once you’re writing in the first person, then the narrator is a writer.

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn’t cool.

I feel like the way I was raised was to be able to see through all the titles in this world – from religion to race.

Life is a song to me.