It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‚always do what you are afraid to do.‘

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.

Absolutely not. I have no problem with commitment. In fact, I love having someone in my life.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

My family, frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn’t raise me in the church, so I came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

Before finding music, I didn’t have too many aspirations. I wanted to hang out, make a little money from whatever I had to do.

We all sort of do want incentives for creative people to still exist at a certain level. You know, maybe rock stars shouldn’t make as much; who knows? But you want as much creativity to take place in the future as took place in the past.

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

If there be no enemy there’s no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

The only shame is to have none.

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.

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

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Don’t be a spectator, don’t let life pass you by.

I’m sure I’ve changed my mind about something. Inevitably, when we grow up – as we get more experience and wiser. Well, I’ve changed my mind about some food that I didn’t like when I was young.

I still have mixed feelings about what growing up is – this thing that happens to everyone, so I’ve heard.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

Many people resented my impatience and honesty, but I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.

You know, most people really don’t know me.

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

My reputation grows with every failure.

The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

A person who is truly authentic doesn’t need to play a role in life, we think, but can simply be him – or herself.

When you seek the presence of your creative Spirit and are filled with passion about virtually everything you undertake, you’ll successfully remove the roadblocks from your life and enjoy the active presence of Spirit.

The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

Since day one, since the first time I touched the pen, I wanted to be the best at what I do.

Without failure there is no achievement.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

I can do whatever I want.

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

We of the sinking middle class may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.

Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

If you can ask a young man to give his life for his country, you can lead people.

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know.

I’m not a regrets-type person.

We’re all insecure, aren’t we? I’m not walking around like I’m macho man or anything.

I will not be concerned at other men’s not knowing me; I will be concerned at my own want of ability.

I am not designed to come second or third. I am designed to win.

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.