I’m very picky; I’m never happy with anything. It’s so hard to give the record away and accept that you’re done.

I thought I would try to be gay for a while, but I’m just more sexually attracted to women. But I’m really glad that I found a few gay friends, because it totally saved me from becoming a monk or something.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

If you are against yourself, you will never reach your highest potential. And when you criticize yourself, you’re criticizing God.

I decided, very early on, just to accept life unconditionally; I never expected it to do anything special for me, yet I seemed to accomplish far more than I had ever hoped. Most of the time it just happened to me without my ever seeking it.

Politics has always been ugly to me, and yet I accept that as a fact of life.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

To like an individual because he’s black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn’t white.

Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.

We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly, even if they roll a few stones upon it.

Lord Jesus, we come just as we are; this is how we came at first, and this is how we come still, with all our failures, with all our transgressions, with all and everything that is what it ought not to be, we come to Thee.

We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.

The true genius shudders at incompleteness – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

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

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‚It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.‘ This was a very healthy attitude.

Being at ease with not knowing is crucial for answers to come to you.

I don’t look at my old work. I mean, they made nice books; the books were made without me, the one from last year and the one from this year. I – personally, I’m not interested in my own past. I’m only interested in today – perhaps tomorrow.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, ‚I release the need for this in my life‘.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect.

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

Death is acceptable only if it represents the physically necessary passage toward a union, the condition of a metamorphosis.

I set up situations that involve abandoning control and finding out what happens.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

Needing to have things perfect is the surest way to immobilize yourself with frustration.

We don’t want people to leave the stadium until the game finishes.

Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.

What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly – that is the first law of nature.

The truth is that you can only come to know God when you give up the past and the future in your mind and merge totally into the now, because God is always here now.

The big message of gospel is that you don’t have to keep fighting the universe; you can stop, and the universe is quite good to you. There is a loss of ego.

I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I’m walking down the street.

Perfectionists demand perfection from themselves first and foremost.

The best is the enemy of the good.

The Tao teaches us to let go of things. Use the 80/20 rule. If you take all your clothes, you’ll find out that you only wear 20 percent of them. Take what you have and don’t use and circulate it. Give stuff to people who truly need it. After all, we come into this world with nothing; we leave this world with nothing.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

I’m not into albums that are meant to sound perfect.

Generally, the younger the victim, the greater the grief. Yet even when the elderly or infirm have been afforded merciful relief, their loved ones are rarely ready to let go.

Begin – to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.

Let go of offence. Let go of fear. Let go of revenge. Don’t live angry, let go now!

I’ve reached the point where I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on turning without me, and I can’t do anything to change events anyway.

God tells us not to judge one another, no matter what anyone’s sexual preferences are or if they’re black, brown or purple.

I’m never going to be fast, and nobody will ever mistake me for being fast.

I accept chaos, I’m not sure whether it accepts me.

Me and my dad are friends. We’re cool. I’ll never be disappointed again, because I don’t expect anything anymore from him. I just let him exist, and that’s how we get along.

I am absolutely my own biggest critic.

I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

I don’t want enemies. I want friends, and I want them in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and loving whoever they want to.

I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.

Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It’s tough to do that when we’re terrified about what people might see or think.