It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‚Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.‘

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

I don’t know if I particularly want to be remembered for anything. I personally do not think I’m a great gift to the world. I’ve been very fortunate.

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

It’s more interesting for me to figure out how to be superior in areas where I’m naive, where I’m a novice.

I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.

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.

Money does not change people, people change.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

We cannot live being obsessed with what other people think about us. It’s impossible to live like that. Not even God managed to please the entire world.

This has been my life for many years; one role feeds the other.

Spiritual people don’t float around all day on clouds of glory; they live in the real world and deal with real issues in real ways.

Libraries raised me.

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

I am like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can’t stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

It seems like a lot of people seek their peace in things. And most of us are not even satisfied with the things we have… we always want more.

My mother did not like children.

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that.

It’s always appealing to play a character that has to overcome himself as well as an obstacle. It makes the drama so much deeper.

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn’t a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.

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

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

Feeling sorry for ourselves is the most useless waste of energy on the planet. It does absolutely no good. We can’t let our circumstances or what others do or don’t do control us. We can decide to be happy regardless.

I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.

I think there are a number of things that you can do to encourage your kids‘ dreams, but I do believe in speaking by experience of having a lot of help along the way, stumbling in the past. We’ve all stumbled, and we certainly all deserve to get up and walk again.

There’s something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

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

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

By indignities men come to dignities.

Some people are very good at being ‚stars‘ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.

Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

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

If one oversteps the bounds of moderation, the greatest pleasures cease to please.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

At one time, I was very angry. I even treated fashion like a kind of crusade: you were either with us or against us, that kind of feeling. Now I know we need ideas, not kicking down a door.

If every choice you make comes from an honest place, you’re solid, and nothing anybody can say about you can rock you or change your opinion.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.

I sometimes have a tendency to walk on the dark side.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

I was at a New Year’s Eve party, and someone asked me how was my year, and I said, ‚I honestly think 2011 was the best year of my entire life,‘ and I actually meant it.

Fear clogs; faith liberates.

It’s the journey of self, I guess. You start with this kind of loner, outside guy, which a lot of people can relate to, and he goes out into the world.

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

I am, as a character, at times, a little overbearing. I recognize that.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

A properly balanced story provides an equal representation of the negative and positive attributes of, I could say the world, but it’s actually a being. ‚Harry Potter“s a good example. So Harry’s the hero, right. But he’s tainted with evil. There’s a dark and a light in every bit of that narrative. It’s well balanced.

I’m still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.