Many people have an intense feeling about what they’re best at. Too often, they’re driven away from it by other people.

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.

My head’s never really quiet. The only time I can get it to turn off is if I watch ‚CSI‘ or ‚Law & Order,‘ where I have to follow the crime. If I can’t turn my head off during that, I know I’ve really got a problem.

The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one’s self.

Films and television and even comic books are churning out vast quantities of fictional narratives, and the public continues to swallow them up with great passion. That is because human beings need stories.

Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

The more in harmony with yourself you are, the more joyful you are and the more faithful you are. Faith is not to disconnect you from reality – it connects you to reality.

I like touring extensively because I think the more hours you spend onstage, the more you know who you are onstage.

Remember, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

I even found it difficult to watch myself playing on TV because I couldn’t identify with the person on the screen. I couldn’t get to grips with it. It was as if it was all happening to someone else.

You have a nice personality, but not for a human being.

I was always interested – I mean, it’s kind of part of your job – I was always interested in the camera.

It doesn’t matter where you come from, what you have or don’t have, what you lack, or what you have too much of. But all you need to have is faith in God, an undying passion for what you do and what you choose to do in this life, and a relentless drive and the will to do whatever it takes to be successful in whatever you put your mind to.

It was a personal decision for me to stand and say that cricket is all I have in life, there’s nothing I need to do other than cricket. If I want to achieve whatever I thought as a kid, I need to work hard and not let it go to waste.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

The people who truly know me know what I’m like. There have been people who try to say things that aren’t fair, and I check them. And then they don’t like me because I checked them.

I’ve learned that we all change constantly. It’s rare to find that person who is growing with you in the same way at the same time, who encourages you to grow.

It seems like when I was growing up there was more compromise, wanting to work with each other, and I think all of them – all of the lawmakers – have hearts to do what’s right, and they all are passionate about it.

If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.

To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you, too, can be president of the United States.

There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

Vanity is but the surface.

It is hard sometimes to always be at the centre of attention, but when you talk about me you also have to talk about the climate.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

If you don’t know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it’s kind of hard to put things together.

I’m quite a chauvinistic person.

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulty of my life… I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a vagabond.

Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.

I go to all these photo shoots, and each time I figure out something new about myself and what I want to wear.

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

I just was never into performing. It’s just hard work. It’s hard work.

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.

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.‘

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

Music is really driving my whole life.

There are many things I do where the centre of it is… It’s almost more my humanitarian work than art.

There’s a part of you – the born-again part, your spirit – that’s dead to sin. That’s why it bothers you now when you sin. The ‚wilderness‘ part of you – your soul – is your unrenewed mind, out-of-control emotions, and stubborn will.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

If you look at the history of our country over the last 100 years, there have been periods where science and research have been celebrated. They were really kind of held up as heroes in society, which encouraged a generation of people to go into these fields.

People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.

I thank God I’m in a position where I can pick and choose – there are some roles I don’t play.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

I’m not happy all the time, and I wouldn’t want to be because that would make me a shallow person. But I do try to find the good in everybody.

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

What a liberation to realize that the ‚voice in my head‘ is not who I am. ‚Who am I, then?‘ The one who sees that.

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

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

I don’t really get nervous that much, or if I do, only I know. It’s all inside me. I am good at hiding everything.