It seems like we wake up and it’s a race until you get to bed. It gets to you after a while and you think, ‚What the hell am I doing?‘

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

I really have no interest in myself.

Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can’t get it out, I start feeling bad about myself – a lot of self-loathing.

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

Most men are within a finger’s breadth of being mad.

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

I hope not to define myself by suffering.

Since thou are not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour.

I admire people who destroy themselves.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

It needs time. Nobody wants to hear it, but that’s the truth: if you want to have success in the future, you have to be ready to work now.

The hippie movement politicized my generation. When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history, looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

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.

Seeing myself on the screen makes me cringe. I understand that I am that way – pouty.

People who work for me know that family comes first. And I’m fortunate to have a family that is very supportive of the work I do, so I don’t have to live two separate lives.

When your soul is resting, your emotions are okay, your mind is okay, and your will is at peace with God, not resisting what He’s doing.

Sometimes we be playing the politics too much and forget who we are just to win.

I have trouble imagining what I could do that’s beyond the practicality of what I can do.

The average family spends 30 hours in front of a television, and they say they don’t have the time to have a balanced, integrated life.

Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

Do not laugh much or often or unrestrainedly.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

If I couldn’t laugh I just would go insane, If we couldn’t laugh we just would go insane, If we weren’t all crazy we would go insane.

I really didn’t consider myself happy or unhappy.

The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.

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

Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.

For an author, the nice characters aren’t much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They’re doing it for themselves.

It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you’re in boom times.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

However great may be the work for which we are responsible, we will always do well if we pause to spend time in sacred praise.

It’s hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure.

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?

What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon? And the day after that, and the next thirty years?

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

I’ve always put everybody else’s child first before my own health, before my own outfit, before my own time frame.

Your greatest asset is your earning ability. Your greatest resource is your time.

I disagree with everything I used to say.

I want to work; then, as my kids get older, I want to have adventures. I want to visit all their countries: learn and live inside all their cultures.

When I’m a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It’s somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.

Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.

My biographers… would like to have my time at the court almost complete before they finish the book. We decided… to flip the order.

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.

First thing I do in the morning, after I have my breakfast and do my spiritual work, is put on my makeup and fix my hair, and I can do my makeup in 15 minutes.

Your emotions are very unstable and should never be the foundation for direction in your life.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?

Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can’t expect an angel to look out.

Men must know their limitations.

If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?

I’ve always felt that if I examine myself too much, I’ll find out what I know and don’t know, and I’ll burst the bubble. I’ve gotten so lucky relying on my animal instincts, I’d rather keep a little bit of the animal alive.

If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.