Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.

I’m like a recovering perfectionist. For me it’s one day at a time.

Some people are very good at being ‚stars‘ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays… and my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God. For me, at least, it got in the way.

It was weird to be married; you kind of lose your identity. You’re suddenly somebody’s wife. And you’re like, ‚Oh, I’m half of a couple now. I’ve lost me.‘

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

Don’t compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.

In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

If you’re going to spend two years of your life on something, it has to matter to you; you have to be passionate about it.

I have often been downcast but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary, I treat all the privations as amusing.

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

A hustler has to deal with danger and risk. It’s part of the game. You cannot control it all, nor would you want to. Chaos, unknown factors are not something to be anxious about.

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can’t move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.

I had a lot of resistance, and not just to fame. I was always conscious of not changing.

I think that when you’re making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second.

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘

The real truths of life are never entirely new to you or to anybody because there is a level deep down within you where you already know all the things, all those spiritual truths that you read or hear, and then recognize them. I say ‚recognize‘ because you’re not… it’s not new.

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

Real life is the life that’s in you, not your circumstances, like where you live or what job you have or who you’re in relationship with.

Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.

History will point out some of the things I did wrong and some of the things I did right.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

A man must now swallow more belief than he can digest.

If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy!

I always try to be myself. Ever since I was an introverted kid, I’d get on stage and be able to break out of my shell.

I don’t do things for the response or for the controversy. I just live my life.

Under the worst conditions, horrendous conditions, people still, you know, fight for their rights and don’t just succumb.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

You need to understand what works best for your own body.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

Sometimes you must suffer through something to defeat your fear of it.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

Men must know their limitations.

I don’t have any secrets I need kept any more.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

I think it’s healthy for a person to be nervous. It means you care – that you work hard and want to give a great performance. You just have to channel that nervous energy into the show.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

God has entrusted me with myself.

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

My main goal is to be a self-made man and have control over what’s mine.

My life has been very full.

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

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.‘

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

When I grew up, the Devil was a reason why I had a headache or the Devil was the reason I got mad today. We always blamed the Devil. I think today when I say the Enemy, I like to make it broader. Sometimes the Enemy can be our own thoughts.

I’ve always wanted to live above my means because it inspired me to work harder.

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.

You can’t do something forever.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

I restore myself when I’m alone.

I think what’s important is for us to decipher what is honest and what is dishonest and be accepting of those things and not operating from fear.