It’s true that I’ve never had a burning desire to rebel against my parents.

I admire people who destroy themselves.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

Follow your honest convictions and be strong.

Train up a child in the way that he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.

My friends are my estate.

I’ve always had a problem with the average macho man – they’ve always been a threat to me.

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that’s not easy.

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

Say there’s a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter – for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that’s saying is that he’s living a fantasy life of rebellion.

A child wants things to be a certain way. When you get to be an adult, you just understand that some people are good, some are not, and you can’t be naive.

You simply have to accept that your demons are a part of you.

The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

All good leaders are connectors. They relate well and make people feel confident about themselves and their leader.

Even the securest financial plan and the finest health coverage aren’t enough to hold us steady when the challenges come… We need something more, something deeper and unshakeable, something that will see us through life’s hard times.

My mother did not like children.

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.

Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.

Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

Self-actualized people are independent of the good opinion of others.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before.

The reason why I am proud of my part in the punk movement is that I think it really did implant a message that was already there. The hippies told it to me, but punk made it something cool for people to stand up for, which is that we do not believe government, that we are against government.

What’s really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore.

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

One of life’s terrible truths is that women like guys who seem to know what they’re doing.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

I was a bit challenged when I was younger to stay on the right path.

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.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

There’s no political point worth my son’s life.

I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.

Many people, especially young people, would like to be more independent and on their own. But it is very difficult and they suffer from feelings of isolation. I think that is one reason why young readers support my work.

What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

I’ve learned over the years that when I go to that place of passion within me, there’s no force in the universe that can interfere with my completing a project.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

Few are drawn to the person whom others avoid and neglect; people gather around those who have already attracted interest.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

Had I been a great athlete, I’m not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.

I did have two dads; one was a socialist, and one was a capitalist. I really decided I would rather be a capitalist.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

Secrets are things we give to others to keep for us.

For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

Money does not change people, people change.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

If you have an enemy, then learn and know your enemy, don’t just be mad at him or her.

Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Everybody has a purpose.

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

The difference between us and them, between you and success, is not that you never fail, but it’s how you recover from those failures – is that you keep getting up time and time again. You figure out what you did wrong, and then you make it right. I say that to my kids every day.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.