Jealousy… is a mental cancer.

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.

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

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don’t want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

Sometimes, if you begin to sing in a halfhearted mood, you can sing yourself up the ladder. Singing will often make the heart rise.

My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication – it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness – it is all that I have – and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.

Words are powerful; if you change your words, you can change your life.

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.

Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.

Seeing Pax get extra-nervous about which shirt he is going to wear when he meets Aung San Suu Kyi, I get very moved. He rightfully doesn’t get nervous going to a movie premiere; he gets nervous going to meet her.

It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you cannot get.

It’s fun to be hopelessly in love. It’s dangerous, but it’s fun.

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

I never expected to be anybody important.

The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.

Overall there’s going to be things I’m not great at.

Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.

I’ve had sleep paralysis.

You might be tough, but you can only be so tough for so long, you know what I mean? The brain can only take so much damage. The body can only take so much damage.

I’ve suffered through depression and anxiety my entire life.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

Whenever you give up something, you must replace it with something.

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

Cycling can be lonely, but in a good way. It gives you a moment to breathe and think, and get away from what you’re working on.

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.

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.

I hate smiling. It makes me feel weak and powerless and small. I’ve always been like that; I don’t smile in any pictures.

Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.

What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.

Meditation has been a loyal friend to me. It has helped me write my books.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it’s unbelievable!

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

You just want something else that someone else has, but that doesn’t mean what you have isn’t beautiful, because people always want what you have, and you always want what they have – no one is ever 100 per cent like, ‚Yes, I’m the bomb dot com – from head to toe!‘

I was very depressed when I was 19… I would go back to my apartment every day and I would just sit there. It was quiet and it was lonely. It was still. It was just my piano and myself. I had a television and I would leave it on all the time just to feel like somebody was hanging out with me.

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

You have to feel confident. If you don’t, then you’re going to be hesitant and defensive, and there’ll be a lot of things working against you.

My mother was a professional sick person; she took a lot of pain pills. There are many people like that. It’s just how they are used to getting attention. I always remember she’s the daughter of alcoholics who’d leave her alone at Christmas time.

If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.

Whatever good things we build end up building us.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

Find people who will make you better.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can’t be locked up with anyone for too long.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means – either may do – the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

You cannot see the changes that you’re dreaming about, because they’re internal.

Women in particular need to keep an eye on their physical and mental health, because if we’re scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don’t have a lot of time to take care of ourselves. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‚to do‘ list.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

I have the Midas touch, in the way that when I hook up with a project, I feel, not speaking cocky or conceited, but there’s a confidence I have. I learned that from Muhammad Ali; I used to bodyguard him. He taught me about confidence. So when it comes to any job I work, I’m gonna do it good; I’m going to bring it over the top.

Your Highest Self is not just an idea that sounds lofty and spiritual. It is a way of being. It is the very first principle that you must come to understand and embrace as you move toward attracting to you that which you want and need for this parenthesis in eternity that you know as your life.