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

What comes out when life squeezes you? When someone hurts or offends you? If anger, pain and fear come out of you, it’s because that’s what’s inside.

I would hear stories about Steve Jobs and feel like he was at 100 percent exactly what he wanted to do, but I’m sure even a Steve Jobs has compromised. Even a Rick Owens has compromised. You know, even a Kanye West has compromised. Sometimes you don’t even know when you’re being compromised till after the fact, and that’s what you regret.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

If I wouldn’t have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual lifestyle.

There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

When I was writing ‚Kitchen Confidential,‘ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

I feel that sin and evil are the negative part of you, and I think it’s like a battery: you’ve got to have the negative and the positive in order to be a complete person.

Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.

I may be no better, but at least I am different.

Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.

I guess I’m living in the present more than the past.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

I don’t have any regrets. I made all my own decisions.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

I went through a period when I felt my film characters were having more fun than I was. It might partly explain why I ended up tattooed or doing certain extreme things in my life.

He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals.

To me, my house is always recreating what I lost in youth.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

It’s like a muscle – if you stop going to the gym or stop running, you get weak. The military teaches you these great values, but we don’t keep up the discipline on our own, and we lose it. So wherever you go, keep that discipline up.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

Always say ‚yes‘ to the present moment… Surrender to what is. Say ‚yes‘ to life – and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you.

Life is not accumulation, it is about contribution.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

God has his plans and his reasons. Sometimes we are supposed to go through things so that we learn lessons.

If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

Before all else, be armed.

I never say I am a guru.

I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.

I like criticism. It makes you strong.

Playing in MLS was a great experience. It has boosted my confidence and I feel I have matured as a player.

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

I can’t jump the highest. I’m obviously not the biggest, not the strongest.

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!

Now I realize that from ’72 through to about ’76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that’s happening to me, and some days I feel everyone’s waiting for me to mess up.

I don’t have all the answers.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

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.

Never say anything about yourself you do not want to come true.

It has been hard for me to find it, but I have found love.

I stopped doing drugs when I was 20. I was finished with drugs before Nirvana even started.

The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they’re 95 percent dead wood.

It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.